Do We Not Like That?

In a throwback to the bad old Graham Taylor England days, we are left contemplating various permutations for qualification to Euro 2008. So if Macedonia beat Croatia, and then we beat Croatia by a three goal margin or Israel draw or win against Russia and then we beat Croatia - we're through! Never going to happen. RTG hopes you took our advice from our September 6th posting not to book your flights to Austria or Switzerland.

Of the scenarios above, according to the form book, we are most likely left relying on Israel to get points off Russia. Let's take a look at the likelihood of this for a moment. We've already discussed in this blog last week how influence and interests of wealthy football investors appear shrouded in confusion and potentially detrimental to competition in the sport. Roman Abramovich is a major contributor to the Russian national team and is believed to bankroll Gus Hiddink's salary. He also 'found' the funding for the new Russian national stadium. Strangely, he doesn't seem able to afford to put underfloor heating in the stadium but we'll gloss over that for now.

But his influence also extends to Israeli football. He attempted to purchase Hapoel Tel Aviv in 2005 but was advised, given he is owner of Chelsea, not to do so. Consequently he persuaded his wealthy, close friend, Lev Leviev, to get involved with Israeli football and buy them instead. He seems to be most comfortable when he surrounds himself with Jewish/Russian cronies anyway. Take Avram Grant and Pini Zahavi as clear examples of this. Whichever way you choose to look at it, he clearly has major connections with both Israeli and Russian football. Can we really expect an Israeli team who are already out of the competition to go all out for victory? We don't think so, nor do we expect Croatia to lose to Macedonia.

Let's make no excuses for England's failure last night. We've heard a lot about "lack of passion" and "wanting to wear the shirt" ad nauseam from the pundits but the bottom line is we have not been good enough in what should have been a comfortable group. We made a promising start last night against Russia where we attacked and defended comfortably, and managed to take a one goal lead into the half-time break. But Russia's tactical changes saw us retreat further and further back until we were left looking like a bunch of clueless hoofers.

This has been a worrying trend right back to the Euro 2000 tournament where we were brutally exposed in our inability to keep possession of the ball. In his defence Sven Goran Eriksson must have realised this from the onset of his tenure because he turned us into a long ball side, capable of qualifying out of a group but shown wanting against the better sides. Last night we could blame Robinson, Rooney, plastic pitches or the ref if we wanted but, the way we were playing last night, it seemed inevitable that Russia would score again once they had equalised. The talent is there no doubt but the tactics and the intelligence to win important matches are not. Gus Hiddink out thought Steve McClaren completely and in an interview last night said that he knew that if you put the English defence under sustained pressure they would struggle to cope. And struggle they did.

Where do we go now? We've already discussed the problem lies deeper than just the manager but Steve McClaren clearly has to go. Who to replace him? Is there somebody out there with the tactical know-how, winning attitude, skin of a rhino and ability to get the best out of English players? Ole Jose!

Reclaim the Game - The Week's Events

• The BBC have been preparing, over the last week, for announcing redundancies to recover a £2 Billion deficit. Here's some suggestions to recover part of the debt: 1. Concentrate on acquiring the sport in the first place and don't pay the useless, ex-footballers, but with no brain pundits - e.g. Alan (I'm so Mary Popiins, my wife makes me do this) Shearer, Ian (the louder I shout, the more people believe my credibility) Wright and several others who don't add anything to our coverage to make it worth the expense; 2. Keep your serious football reporters and get rid of Chris Hollins who seemed to spend the whole of Germany 2006, at our expense, reporting on anything but football. What on earth do WAG massages and making Black Forest Gateaux have to do with World Cup football? 3. Gaby Logan - why? 4. Stop sending Five Live's Nicky Campbell to every major sporting occasion just for us to have to listen to him recounting his previous evening's corporate (also at our expense) entertainment over breakfast. Do the BBC, or any TV company for that matter, not understand the basic supply and demand laws of economics. There are millions of people willing to do presenting jobs out there. The desire to do the job should pay for itself.
• The collective intellectual footballing brain that is the Sky Sports pundit team, suggested one solution to England's qualification woes is to 'bring back David Beckham'. Well, when he gets his place back in the LA Galaxy team perhaps it might be a 'solution' (?@!*@??&*) worth thinking about. Solution? It's too late to help us now thanks chaps but you keep spouting out the first thing that comes into your brain rather than giving any serious thought to something that might be worth hearing.
• Sammy Lee, despite being the early favourite, was not the first Premiership manager to get the boot this season. Just goes to show that promoting second in command to overall General doesn't seem to work. FA take note...........hmmmmm.