Tragic Football Stories - Let us Kick Around the misshapen Jabulani that is English football right here

make mark e smith national manager imo

i agree with you about gerrard, but then i think the same about lampard & rooney.

given that ferdinand's a crock, what's left? and any stage of development?

at any stage, sry

phil jones iirc

also ciaran clark

not forgetting titus bramble

keep away from ciaran clark ty

you'll be after the uncapped coleman next

lampard has not been used well by england and our other midfielders have not been up to his standard. fact

also why are all the cunts we need not english

Lennon Huddlestone Wilshere Young Agbonlahor Walcott

add carroll as the focal point here, hell- add k davies temporarily if you like. add in a johnson, henderson and rodwell too, if they're your thing. maybe cattermole, and maybe parker temporarily.

there's a lot going on that isn't a jaded and frankly not-too-bothered g barry right now

have you u-turned on lampard in recent times?

got mad hopes for michael mancienne. noodle vague plz come and laugh at me

not lennon, lennon has not got enough. we don't need wingers, we need adaptive forwards, like wilshere arguably but more like players who aren't english

have always liked lampard

as a footballer

tell you what, brian, btw

if michael carrick is yr nation's idea of a 'thoughtful passing midfielder' then

a) you can't tell rabbit in headlights from 'thoughtful'

b) you have no business thinking of seedings for international tournaments.

glad on your behalf capello's stopped picking him

lennon back to form now, yeah, but in the season leading to the WC he was like aaron lennon with a masters in decision making and courage.

mad hopes for mancienne- dash 'em now imo. if years of football manager have taught me anything (debatable) it's that a defender/defensive midfielder with stats above 12 for 'flair/dribble' are always unmitigated disasters

huddlestone hargreaves (still believe!) wilshere henderson (used properly) walcott carroll

is a possibility, ideally we'd have a good long-term replacement for hargreaves (rodwell? cattermole? lol) and who knows how good henri lansbury will be (i do, answer is 'fairly')

the henderson that played vs chelsea the other day is not the one employed to sit back and watch france pass the other day

wait double use of 'the other day' curse it all

hargreaves will never again play a run of games that merits inclusion in an england squad. henderson is still too early days to make any kind of call on, kind of like rodwell imo, but rodwell looks a very good prospect.

walcott- don't think you can include walcott but pooh-pooh lennon. they're the same player, but one runs at the goal while tripping himself up and the other runs at the corner flag. neither good enough for england, in an ideal world, because without pace they'd actually be very shit at football. go with ashley young.

i got hope for walcott's touch and movement, lennon is just a wing-merchant who has been worked out largely

lennon's neural pathways are deep and intimidating structures, but when hes jolted out of them (as was the case for a large part of last year) he's better than walcott will ever be, i think. i don't think walcott's good enough at football to be successfully included in a team that likes to keep and pass the ball. i cant understand how he's still at arsenal, tbh.

Lennon has suffered a bit from a) his injury last season and b) the emergence of Gareth Bale at the same time. Spurs players used to pass to him at every opportunity, now he barely gets the ball because it's always going out left.

Nothing about any of these future England XIs being compiled convinced me that they will have enough to compete internationally for the next ten years or so.

ok well i've previously included them both in mooted england teams

fast players with great touch and adaptability would be nice. lennon needs to move to a club where 4-4-2 is not practiced

lennon needs to move to liverpool

haaaa

It's not practised at Spurs very often any more, but Lennon strikes me as a straight 4-4-2 kinda winger, not the kind that can adapt very well to being the right side of a front three. It's more likely to be Adam Johnson playing there in future.

oh god yeah I forgot him, he has ability even if his movement might not be quite there

Also he's left-footed but whatever.

that isn't so much an issue, viz. every decent european side currently playing

he's a left footer, but his main strength is shooting/crossing with inswing on that foot, so right side it is

lampard can play in the middle for england until the next euros imo, he's more needed than everyone thinks, but he needs good players around him - lampard, wilshere, huddlestone, hargreaves/rodwell/cattermole axis of short-passing splendour

dunno that lampard's short passing game is anything like as good as his long cunting game tbph

thread needs pete w right now - lampard's short passing game is pretty good tbpfh

he just hasn't had people to short-pass to

perhaps lee cattermole will become the english essien

pf, daswo i'm tawkinbaaaht

dunno, even based on chelsea i don't think pass and move is his thing. he got mad defence-unlocking passes, no doubt, but not sure he's really a give-and-go type

he's a kinda deep-lying give-and-go initiator maybe

hmm

scholes plz be 25 again

hargreaves/rodwell/cattermole axis of short-passing splendour

you

it's easy to snipe from the sidelines

i mean look at rafa............

nothing against hargreavres and rodwell btw

cattermole is just a cunt

hargreaves snapped in half trying to pick up his injury file, let's be real

tragic story of english football is the first red card of season book....first half dozen names are usually all english

is a possibility, ideally we'd have a good long-term replacement for hargreaves (rodwell? cattermole? lol)

dude i provided the lol caveat

rodwell is proper player

lol applied only to cattermole, do the rhetorical math

well then the brackets shouldn't have been around both of em iirc

oh i understood