Walker Rooney Cleverley and Bent all out injured

 

I'd play: Hart Richards Smalling Jones Cole Parker Gerrard Milner Young Sturridge Welbeck

as rooney and a few other key players are out, why dont they give some lower league players a chance for once. chopra, Rhodes, even kevin phillips could do as well maybe even better if only they were given a chance.

as rooney and a few other key players are out, why dont they give some lower league players a chance for once. chopra, Rhodes, even kevin phillips could do as well maybe even better if only they were given a chance.

 

Cos they're not good enough? Chropra can't even make it in the Premier League, let alone on the international stage. Rhodes is Scottish aswell I think? Bet Ipswich fans are kicking themselves for Keane selling him!

LOL Stuart Pearce in today's press conference

 

Reporter: "You were part of the last team that beat Netherlands in Euro 96. What do you think the players can learn from your team ?"

 

Pearce: "From that I don't think they'll learn a lot. Most of them probably weren't born"

 

What ? That would make most players younger than 16

Glen Johnson injured. Lescott called up as a replacement

I don't believe half of these players pulling out actually have injuries that are deemed serious. Rooney with a sore throat.. lol. Luckily they're wanting to scrap the one-off international games, which would be wise imo.

Scott Parker named England captain

 

Odd decision. I would have gone with Gerrard for the Euro's at least with his experience and then a younger choice of Hart or Wilshere once their over

Terrible choice imo. I would have given it Hart.

Captain is such a non-position anyway, the fans and media make it out to be far important than it needs to be. If say, Gerrard, isn't captain is it going to stop him displaying any leadership qualities? Will it stop them being inspirational and motivational off the pitch and to younger players? If the answer to any of those is yes then they don't deserve to be in the squad anyway. For me a captain should always be someone who has the majority of the team around them. First choice a centre back, then a central midfielder. Keepers and Strikers are a big no. Parker's a great choice, a natural leader, an integral part of the side, player of the year.

Captain is such a non-position anyway, the fans and media make it out to be far important than it needs to be. If say, Gerrard, isn't captain is it going to stop him displaying any leadership qualities? Will it stop them being inspirational and motivational off the pitch and to younger players? If the answer to any of those is yes then they don't deserve to be in the squad anyway. For me a captain should always be someone who has the majority of the team around them. First choice a centre back, then a central midfielder. Keepers and Strikers are a big no. Parker's a great choice, a natural leader, an integral part of the side, player of the year.

 

Yes but that's why it is such a big event, because of the media. The captains are the ones who do all the speeches, and meet the sponsers normally. Scotty Parker is a poor choice. 10 England caps, never played in the Champions League and is always one tackle away from ending his career. Granted we don't have a vast amount of candidates, but Gerrard is much better suited and that's not even me being biased. I can only imagine that he won't play much tonight. I think the captain is an important position, because usually it means they are starting every match. I would have given it to Hart.

 

Pearce is a poor manager, and England are going to get a pasting tonight whatever team is put out.

The thing is, it's only for one game. I think Gerrard will be captain at the Euro's whoever is manager but it's pointless giving it to him tonight. He played 120 minutes on Sunday, and has an important game on Saturday so I can't see him playing more than 45 minutes tonight, Parker OTOH can't play for Spurs for another 10 days, so will almost certainly be one of the 5 that plays the full 90 minutes. Parker has pretty much cemented his place now to the point where he will start every match too. After the last 18 months Gerrard has had his only priority is surely to get through to the end of the season making sure he's actually fit for what could be his last international tournament.

The thing is, it's only for one game. I think Gerrard will be captain at the Euro's whoever is manager but it's pointless giving it to him tonight. He played 120 minutes on Sunday, and has an important game on Saturday so I can't see him playing more than 45 minutes tonight, Parker OTOH can't play for Spurs for another 10 days, so will almost certainly be one of the 5 that plays the full 90 minutes. Parker has pretty much cemented his place now to the point where he will start every match too. After the last 18 months Gerrard has had his only priority is surely to get through to the end of the season making sure he's actually fit for what could be his last international tournament.

 

Yeah I don't think Gerrard will start tonight, or if he does, he will come off at half-time. He is not fully match fit yet, and probably won't be for a while. I would rather give it to Hart, but how any manager currently could give the captaincy to Parker over Gerrard is beyond me. I actually think Gerrard will retire after the Euro's to prolong his Liverpool career. Or he will try and get to 100 caps and then retire.

 

So what did everyone think?

 

First and foremost we're just not a good side. We can't play as a team, and I don't buy that it is because they don't play enough together. Complete bullshit. We're just completely unbalanced. I didn't watch the match in great detail, but in the first half the full-backs didn't push up at all. When you're playing with two holding midfielders that has got to happen. Richards to me is very unbalanced. Not as great defensively as the media makes him out to be. We don't have the players to play patient football, especially not at the back. I thought Parker was found out yesterday because he didn't have a posession footballer (normally Modric) in front of him to pass the ball to and known that he will keep it. Phil Jones was terrible, he is not a great defender. Thought it was disgusting how Chiles referred to Capello as Fabio the Foreigner.

Given the complete disparity between the two squads in terms of experience I think England did pretty well all told. There were two exquisite moments from Robben that effectively showed their class but beyond that I didn't think the Dutch were dominant or overly assured. England controlled decent amounts of the game and whilst it's true that the full backs could've gone forward more often, you saw exactly what can happen if someone gets caught out, when Robben opened the scoring.

 

This England team are young and yes they're not overly familiar with each other but keep playing these crop and they will develop that. Take them to Ukraine but don't expect to win it. Learn from the big tournament and keep the same core of players. Ease ourt the remnants of the failed 'Golden Generation' and ease in new blood (eg Oxlade-Chamberlain) and come Brazil we just might have a team that is used to playing together, with big tournament experience and enough youthful passion mixed with elder players who aren't over the hill to just go out there and do something worth remembering.

 

I thought Pearce's selection was a solid look to the future and a continuation of what Cappelo had been building on. Like I sad it was really only two rather special goals that beat England

Given the complete disparity between the two squads in terms of experience I think England did pretty well all told. There were two exquisite moments from Robben that effectively showed their class but beyond that I didn't think the Dutch were dominant or overly assured. England controlled decent amounts of the game and whilst it's true that the full backs could've gone forward more often, you saw exactly what can happen if someone gets caught out, when Robben opened the scoring.

 

This England team are young and yes they're not overly familiar with each other but keep playing these crop and they will develop that. Take them to Ukraine but don't expect to win it. Learn from the big tournament and keep the same core of players. Ease ourt the remnants of the failed 'Golden Generation' and ease in new blood (eg Oxlade-Chamberlain) and come Brazil we just might have a team that is used to playing together, with big tournament experience and enough youthful passion mixed with elder players who aren't over the hill to just go out there and do something worth remembering.

 

I thought Pearce's selection was a solid look to the future and a continuation of what Cappelo had been building on. Like I sad it was really only two rather special goals that beat England

 

Disagree completely. The media have made out that we did really well in some quarters - really do not believe that. England were totally dominant, and even when we had the ball for long periods, Netherlands were so well organised and disciplined that we couldn't even break them down. The sad part is the Netherlands are not even that great, a lot of their players are coming to the ends of their careers and a few of them last night were playing nowhere near their potential. England were extremely lucky to be drawing.

 

The media have praised Scott Parker for his performance. Was I watching a different game? He didn't control the midfield at all, and was dominated by the Dutch. Very odd. England don't have the level of technical skill to play well, and we certainly cannot play up front without some sort of target man as we don't have the right players. Welbeck thought he was playing for Manchester United last night seemingly. Sturridge did ok before he went off injured, better than Welbeck. Loo at whats Trapattoni is doing with RoI. He plays a certain way, and okay it is not the prettiest football in the world but it's effective. He doesn't listen to calls from the media to call up certain players because they don't fit in to the style of play he wants. England need to follow this model imo.

I don't get how you can say we totally dominated the game and then a couple of moments later say the Dutch dominated midfield. I thought Parker was pretty decent if not brilliant. The Dutch had more possesion on the whole but didn't threaten for most of the game. The big difference was in the quality of their finishing. Robben produced two fantastic goals and Huntelaar was clever enough to be on the receiving end of a great cross that came as England were still trying to recover their composure. The Dutch team may be getting on but they remain a classy side and deserve their current world ranking for me. This England side just need more time to gel together and there's some real potential to do well in the big tournaments in future. Just not right now

I'd like to see everyone who played last night (bar maybe Downing and Campbell) in the squad for Euro 2012. We aren't going to win anyway, we aren't going to have a coach who's either A) that good or B) been in the job long enough to implement anything, so it's far better to let these players get the experience of a big tournament, give it to the current coaching set up who can continue the players development and then we can work on being competitive in Brazil.

 

Considering the team played last night I'm not sure how anyone can be that dissatisfied with the game as a whole, it's always going to be tough against a team of Holland's quality, especially as they played what's pretty much their first choice XI last night. We have a young and inexperience team, whilst this could be the last tournament for Holland's own Golden Generation, of the 11 that started last night only the Pieters and De Jong will be under 30 come the World Cup, the latter turning 30 late that year, Huntelaar and Van der Vaart will be in their 30s too.

I don't get how you can say we totally dominated the game and then a couple of moments later say the Dutch dominated midfield. I thought Parker was pretty decent if not brilliant. The Dutch had more possesion on the whole but didn't threaten for most of the game. The big difference was in the quality of their finishing. Robben produced two fantastic goals and Huntelaar was clever enough to be on the receiving end of a great cross that came as England were still trying to recover their composure. The Dutch team may be getting on but they remain a classy side and deserve their current world ranking for me. This England side just need more time to gel together and there's some real potential to do well in the big tournaments in future. Just not right now

 

I didn't say we dominated, or if I did I didn't mean it in that way. In the first half especially England had posession for long periods, but didn't know what to do with the ball. The crowd then started getting restless, and then Cahill would aim a hopeless long ball forward that would be cut out. I thought Parker was poor. I fail to see how he gets all these plaudits. He's an average holding midfielder. He's not great in posession, cannot dictate the games tempo (which is what I think Pearce wanted him to do) and gets caught out of position very easily. All these 'great' tackles he usually makes are because he gets caught out of position and has to make up for it. There is potential there is no doubt about that, but not enough for us to set up play like Brazil, or Spain or the Dutch. We just don't have the technical levels they do. It's a problem of English football full-stop with over coaching and not enough work from the higher powers at grassroots level. Our team wasn't even that inexperience yesterday either. Compared to the Dutch yes.