The England Tale...

The team I'm rooting for this World Cup.
The players I watch every week and love.
The coach I hate.

It's either euphoria or despair whenever a team you support plays. This WC, even though England have won two matches and drawn one, it's been more despair than euphoria. Why? Ohhh my, I can go on and on and on. I'll try to make it short.

If I could fit it in one line, I would say - "Why the hell didn't the FA kick Swen out after the last World Cup?" You should learn from your mistakes soon, else you're bound to fail again. And that's what I fear will happen again this year. The problem is, just like the FA, it seems Swen doesn't want to learn from his mistakes. And he's repeating them over and over again.

Mistake #1 - Team selection
He chose 4 strikers. Out of which one was still injured, one was recovering, one was a baby totally new to even club-football, and one was a guy called Crotch...oops..sorry...Crouch- The basketball player who (sadly for us) found his calling in football. Now, one of them, Owen, has badly injured his knee and is almost surely out of the WorldCup. So, we've got Rooney, who obviously isn't upto peak form yet, Crouch, who....ahh..nevermind, and Walcott, who is not even being given a chance to show his potential.
End result: 1 n 1/2 strikers, hardly enough ammo to win the Cup.
Why didn't he select Jermain Defoe or Darren Bent? beats me....

Mistake #2 - Team formation
A 4-4-2 works for me. Owen and Rooney upfront would have been ideal..unfortunately we saw that for only 4 minutes..and then Owen got injured.
A 4-1-4-1 is not going to help them win the Cup. It's only calling for trouble. The Swedes took full advantage of that.
But whatever the formation, It isn't going to help if he repeats Mistake #3.

Mistake #3 - Team strategy
Defensive Defensive Defensive. Why??
This England squad has the potential to play beautiful and dominating football. Instead, what do you get? A tentative and wary approach, that encourages opponents to play and score against them. First step: Cut the long-ball approach please. It totally takes out people like Stevie-G and Lamps out of the game. Swen's Long-ball approach is the reason why Crouch is there in Germany. This team..these players can play excellent flowing football. Ground passes, first-touches, intelligent through-balls, these are the few of the wonderful things we want to see. And the first rule, never sit back and defend on a 1-0 lead. Taking out Owen and bringing on the other Owen (Hargreaves) in the first match against Paraguay almost cost them the match. Against the Swedes too, substituting their main attacking player - Rooney, midway during the 2nd half. Why O Why?

If it were upto me, what would I do? I would bring Lennon and Downing into the game as much as possible. Play Walcott and Rooney upfront. Or play Joe Cole on the left upfront. Push Becks to rightback whenever Lennon comes in. Those long balls can be supplied from there too. The problem is that Becks keeps disappearing during matches and only comes into light when a set-piece is taken. Against the Swedes, England hardly had a build-up through the right flank. It was all Joe Cole on the left. Give Rooney as much as roaming freedom as possible. Stevie-G and Lamps in a semi-circle arc behind Rooney. And I would let them play fast and attacking football.

Looking forward, I think England has just enough to eke out a victory against Ecuador.
But looking even more further, it gets scary.
England will play the winners of the Portugal - Holland (or maybe Argentina) in the quarters.
Looking at Holland's present form, I think it'll be an Eng-Por match.
They better improve if they want to reach the semis.
Else sadly, it'll be early curtains for England.
Well, if this dark cloud were to have a silver lining, it would be the fact that it would be mean curtains for Swen as well. But as much as I hate him, I would rather have that happen after the final.