Cronky

We don't produce the best players, but we do produce the best referees.

This does feel like an Anti-Ashley protest dressed up as a fund-raiser for the SBR foundation. If you want to help the foundation with some scheme, great, but the motivation here seems confused. It looks like the equivelent of the Man U yellow and green scarves.

Pressing right up the pitch is a key part of what they are about and it's rarely mentioned actually. The game didn't go how I thought it would. I could see Spain having to commit more and more men forward and then get punished on the break. But the minute they lost the ball, they closed the Germans right down and stopped any flow to their attacks. Basically, Spain were too good.

Like Barca, Spain also have a very good pressing game, to go with their creativity in attack. They completely stifled the Germans. If they play like that on Sunday, they'll win.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8789682.stm Success has many proud parents. Failure is an orphan.

Thought Sneijder was brilliant tonight. Radiated confidence in everything he did. As an aside, I was struck how both sides closed their opponents down far better than England did. That used to be a strength of ours, but now we seem to be lagging behind, not just them, but lots of other teams. Tiredness perhaps? You expect the Dutch to be our equals or better at that side of the game, but it's a worry when a South American side looks superior.

When I saw him, he was playing down the middle and he was very impressive. Lots of energy and a fair amount of skill. We should be looking for first team players rather than back-up, and he fits the bill.

The winner.

Strangely they didn't sound so gutted when our bid in January was rejected. Most of them were glad to see him stay.. It's also not taking into account how the majority of this forum didn't rate James Milner when he left. I'm a firm believer in the Bellamy Principle - when assessing new players, don't take any notice of the supporters' view. Every club has its favourites and scapegoats. This is the sort of signing I was expecting and I'm not unhappy. I'd rather take a punt on an up and coming player who sees joining us as a step up, rather than a step down.

Lots of ideas there, some familiar, some not. I can't see a winter break doing any good unless we reduce the number of games, which is the real issue. We play a lot of high-tempo, physical and competitive football, which means that the players need a lot of recovery time and aren't able to do much fitness work in the season. So they end up both tired and unfit at the end of the season. I think Capello has more or less admitted that his long preparation period made the problem of staleness worse. He'll learn from that. Capello prefers to be remote from the players, and allows his assistant Baldini to do the more pally stuff. I've read that Baldini was troubled by his father's illness and wasn't his usual cheerful self in South Africa. Capello has to create a happy working atmosphere and again I hope he's learned that. He will also have learned that if the players are spending weeks away with one another you can't afford to have any disruptive influences. The technical development of players has been a long-standing problem. We're never going to play like Brazilians but we can aspire to be more like the Germans and the Dutch. I think our best players compare favourably with theirs, but they tend to have technical ability more spread throughout the side. Their defensive players usually look far more comfortable on the ball than ours, and that can make quite a difference when retaining the ball or taking advantage of an opportunity to support an attack. Part of their training of young players is to give them experience in different positions, and they end up good all-rounders. I do wonder whether our players specialise too early and we end up with defenders who are technically limited. Good post - In 1992, I spoke to KK at SJP just after SJH took over the club and asked him, as a former player with Hamburg, why German teams and players were often better than their English counterparts and he replied that they were more prepared, as individuals, to return for extra training in afternoons in order to improve their skills. They had a better work ethic about the game than the players in English football. There is no physical reason why Germans or Dutch players should be better than English ones but if anything, the ridiculous rewards available in the Prem has made players MORE lazy than they were before. They have a perception that they are above criticism and are isolated from the fans - also, there is a lack of decent coaching at school level, and many schools have sold off sports fields and facilities. Some teachers are also guilty of a Politically correct approach to sport which discourages individual success and encourages mediocrity. All of these things - and more - will have to be tackled before there is any improvement in the English national side. There was a good story in one of the Sundies, about Micah Richards - a player I'd see as a great talent, but who hasn't developed since he made the first team at City. Patrick Vieira asked him what he wanted out of the game, and Richards said that he wanted to play for England. Vieira then asked him how he expected to do that, when he was always the last one on to the training ground, and the first one to leave.

Yeah, this. Define one of the strikers as withdrawn and put him on the same line as the wide players and 4-4-2 becomes 4-2-3-1. Unless the strikers attempt to play side by side (which I would say is less effective), then there's no real difference. As others have pointed out, what matters is the flexibility you can bring to the system. If you have players interchanging positions and making runs at angles which trouble defenders, then you make your system effective.

Lots of ideas there, some familiar, some not. I can't see a winter break doing any good unless we reduce the number of games, which is the real issue. We play a lot of high-tempo, physical and competitive football, which means that the players need a lot of recovery time and aren't able to do much fitness work in the season. So they end up both tired and unfit at the end of the season. I think Capello has more or less admitted that his long preparation period made the problem of staleness worse. He'll learn from that. Capello prefers to be remote from the players, and allows his assistant Baldini to do the more pally stuff. I've read that Baldini was troubled by his father's illness and wasn't his usual cheerful self in South Africa. Capello has to create a happy working atmosphere and again I hope he's learned that. He will also have learned that if the players are spending weeks away with one another you can't afford to have any disruptive influences. The technical development of players has been a long-standing problem. We're never going to play like Brazilians but we can aspire to be more like the Germans and the Dutch. I think our best players compare favourably with theirs, but they tend to have technical ability more spread throughout the side. Their defensive players usually look far more comfortable on the ball than ours, and that can make quite a difference when retaining the ball or taking advantage of an opportunity to support an attack. Part of their training of young players is to give them experience in different positions, and they end up good all-rounders. I do wonder whether our players specialise too early and we end up with defenders who are technically limited.

Me too. After several years of watching them, I think it boils down to Lampard not being sufficiently adaptable. Unless you play him in that centre mid attacking role, coming from deep, then it's no good picking him. Gerrard has more ability to adapt, and is the one who is always asked to do so. Trouble is, he's the better player and is the one who the midfield should be built around. He either ends up peripheral, or he drifts inside into Lampard's role. Either way, one of them is cancelled out.

I'd agree. Carragher is tough and street wise and wouldn't have allowed himself to be muscled off the ball like that. He's also an organiser who's not afraid to open his mouth. Capello fell to the temptation of picking an unchanged side after a win. Carragher was the better option and should have been restored to the team. Aye, it's exactly the kind of decision you expect a manager as good as Capello to get right. I just wonder if, like every England manager before him seems to have done, he had one eye on how it would play in the press. If you change a winning team and the guy you put in makes a costly error, you'll get torn to bits in the papers. All this is being said with hindsight. Before the game people were generally saying that Capello should retain Upson because he supposedly had a good game against Slovenia. In truth there is nothing much between Carragher and Upson, they are both pretty average and very slow. It's not hindsight on my part, but yes, picking Carragher wouldn't have been a very popular decision. Capello obviously rated Carragher to some extent, because he brought him into the squad from nowhere, and when King got injured, he put Carragher on, not Upson. The only reason that Carragher didn't play against Slovenia was that he'd picked up two yellow cards. Carragher was ahead of Upson in Capello's eyes, so why didn't he restore him to the team? He's had enough chances to weigh up the abilities of both players. One game shouldn't have changed things. Carragher has lost a bit of pace this season, so there's not a lot to choose between him and Upson purely on the playing level. But Carragher does have more big game experience and looks very much the stronger character. That's what we needed against Germany. Regardless of the fact who played against Slovenia and how Capello rated them originally, he made a judgement call to go with Upson based on his observations in training, which none of us have access to. There is no way to say whether we would have performed better with Carragher. It's also ifs and buts. Like you said the popular decision would have been put Carragher back in, that only shows that Capello made his own mind and did not bow down to external pressure just the way he dealt with the Joe Cole situation. Personally I think once we decided to go all out attack in search of the equalizer, including Terry going all the way up for a throw in, we were fucked coz none of our defenders (except maybe Cole) have the pace to cope with German's lighting quick counter attacks. I was saying that Carragher would have actually been the unpopular decision. I doubt that you're right about the training performances. The simplest explanation is that he didn't want to change a winning side. Or rather, a side that had won a game.

I'd agree. Carragher is tough and street wise and wouldn't have allowed himself to be muscled off the ball like that. He's also an organiser who's not afraid to open his mouth. Capello fell to the temptation of picking an unchanged side after a win. Carragher was the better option and should have been restored to the team. Aye, it's exactly the kind of decision you expect a manager as good as Capello to get right. I just wonder if, like every England manager before him seems to have done, he had one eye on how it would play in the press. If you change a winning team and the guy you put in makes a costly error, you'll get torn to bits in the papers. All this is being said with hindsight. Before the game people were generally saying that Capello should retain Upson because he supposedly had a good game against Slovenia. In truth there is nothing much between Carragher and Upson, they are both pretty average and very slow. It's not hindsight on my part, but yes, picking Carragher wouldn't have been a very popular decision. Capello obviously rated Carragher to some extent, because he brought him into the squad from nowhere, and when King got injured, he put Carragher on, not Upson. The only reason that Carragher didn't play against Slovenia was that he'd picked up two yellow cards. Carragher was ahead of Upson in Capello's eyes, so why didn't he restore him to the team? He's had enough chances to weigh up the abilities of both players. One game shouldn't have changed things. Carragher has lost a bit of pace this season, so there's not a lot to choose between him and Upson purely on the playing level. But Carragher does have more big game experience and looks very much the stronger character. That's what we needed against Germany.

I'd agree. Carragher is tough and street wise and wouldn't have allowed himself to be muscled off the ball like that. He's also an organiser who's not afraid to open his mouth. Capello fell to the temptation of picking an unchanged side after a win. Carragher was the better option and should have been restored to the team. Aye, it's exactly the kind of decision you expect a manager as good as Capello to get right. I just wonder if, like every England manager before him seems to have done, he had one eye on how it would play in the press. If you change a winning team and the guy you put in makes a costly error, you'll get torn to bits in the papers. Capello has been more resistant to that pressure than any other England manager, bar Ramsey. But yes, I did wonder whether he had finally succumbed, with that decision and with keeping Defoe. Yes, he got the goal against Slovenia, but he can't hold the ball up and shouldn't have been asked to lead the line against a top team.

I'd agree. Carragher is tough and street wise and wouldn't have allowed himself to be muscled off the ball like that. He's also an organiser who's not afraid to open his mouth. Capello fell to the temptation of picking an unchanged side after a win. Carragher was the better option and should have been restored to the team.

I'm not sure about the Spanish defence. The Germans are brilliant on the break and I think they'll do them.

I'll agree with you to a certain extent. For some stupid reason James came out and stopped halfway. Upson I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, he was outmuscled by Klose and had to let him 'go' at some point coz otherwise it could have easily been a penalty. Besides nobody thinks of Upson as anything more than an average premier league center back. But of all the mistakes, Terry's was the worst and most amateurish, the fact that many think of him as a world class center back just makes it worse. I think that's a good point. Terry does have both the experience and the ability and he's one of the players who the others should be able to look up to and rely on. It couldn't have helped the likes of Upson or Johnson to be watching our best defender playing like a novice.

Providing Capello still has the appetite and determination for the job, then he should stay. He's never managed a team at a World Cup before, and he'll have gathered valuable experience. I suspect he will get away from the boot-camp atmosphere at any future tournament and take steps to help the players to relax. He'll have to decide whether John Terry is worth it. He never seems to play as well for England as he does for Chelsea. He gets caught out of position and misjudges the flight of the ball in ways that he doesn't for his club. It baffles me a bit that he is considered a leader because half the time he seems to be playing within himself and avoiding responsibility. Against Germany, he seemed to be AWOL mentally. The stories about him not coming to terms with losing the captaincy and that causing tension are completely credible. That daft outburst about speaking up in a team meeting about Capello seemed to be not just a challenge to the manager but to the captain as well. He was left high and dry and I suspect that if Capello hadn't been so short of alternatives he'd have dropped him.

I'm backing Rooney to come good this afternoon. 2-0 to England.

You lost. Deal with it.

I love watching Ghana play. They're my second favourite team at this tournament. So many of their players have this great balance and they can change direction and pace really easily. Vulnerable on the back foot, but going forward they're great to watch.

It's now or never for Ghana. I can't see them winning it in extra time.

Ghana need to be more positive and go for another goal. The Americans will score, the way things are going.