Sports Books Blog

I did so hope this wasn’t going to turn into GOB – Grumpy Old Blog. But then England put on the worst display I’ve seen from 50 years of watching them. Thirteen of these were as a football reporter so I saw every match then and they were never as bad as in the first half of the 3-0 win over Andorra – even though the Andorrans were playing away in Barcelona England were dreadful and a lot of what went wrong must be laid at the door of their new coach Steve McClaren. He can’t be held responsible for Rio Ferdinand’s inability to roll the ball ten yards in the right direction or the passing along the back line which requires a man to check and run backwards to get the ball. Ferdinand probably earns more in a year than the GDP of Andorra which has a population of 71,000 and sixty per cent of those are Spanish.
But at one point when England were taking a throw in on the half way line I counted six England players still in their own half watching one from the opposition. And once when England had five players back taking care of one, their centre forward Andy Johnson came running back to tackle. Those must be instructions from the coach. And if he’s told them not to do that then he should get rid of them and put in players who will play to instruction. But it must be down to McClaren because that’s the way Middlesborough used to play when he was in charge. Time for a change already I’m afraid. And as for storming out of a press conference… well.
One good thing from the game was the performance of Steven Gerrard. It’s been obvious for years that he should be in central midfield and that he and Frank Lampard cannot play together (or at least haven’t managed to in many years) and without the Chelsea man Gerrard bossed the second half. Another problem for McClaren. I’ll bet he bottles it and messes it up with both Gerrard and Lampard for the game in Estonia in June.
Odd though how you shout at the TV when all this is happening. I belong to the generation born in the Second World War and I’m a convinced internationalist, down with frontiers etc. Yet when it comes to sport I’m as big a chauvinist as anybody. I wanted Northern Ireland to beat Sweden, Scotland to beat Italy, the Republic of Ireland to beat Slovakia and Wales to beat San Marino. Yet France is closer geographically to me than any one of the home countries except Wales and I couldn’t care less that France beat Lithuania. Very strange.

You didn’t need to read the papers to see that there is a rift between Steve McClaren and Terry Venables. The body language after the 0-0 draw with Israel told the story by itself. As a former sports reporter who once had the job of covering England, the present plight of the team is nothing new. We have always lagged behind when it comes to tactics and intelligence. Venables was one of the few England coaches who understood this, Sven was another and his reign is starting to take on a whole new meaning as McCLaren stumbles forward.

My take on international football has always been that you play players in their club positions because international football is a step up from club football and the player needs to be as comfortable as possible. Yet McLaren played five players out of position against Israel. Then he showed no imagination in his substitutions. It was Graham Taylor all over again and at least Graham Taylor could claim to have been a successful club manager.

Still we should beat Andorra, which is basically a hotel and car park.