Why we lost on Wednesday !

Sheddie · administrator

Why we lost on Wednesday !

Drew · Nov 23, 2007

Why we lost on Wednesday...

'we' (England) lost because of the following :

T h e y a r e n o t g o o d e n o u g h !

Overpaid leading to a lack of motivation in quite a few of them....Mclaren..nice man..no charisma...great coach and always will be.

Half the FA board should also go...idiots !

Anyway even as a Scot I wanted them to make it.

john · Top national player

When you say Mclaren is a good coach, do you mean that literally ie he is a good COACH or do you really think he should be in charge of the national team in the capacity of a MANAGER?

Certainly as assistant at Man Utd, he was very highly regarded as a coach, no players with a bad word to say and obviously Sir Alex was a big fan. Arguably, United's slump of a few years back could be put down to him being replaced by Queirez.

HOWEVER, his record as a MANAGER at Middlesbrough was average at best and I struggle to see how he merited his appointment as England manager. Being a good coach on the training ground doesn't automatically qualify you to take charge of a national team.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Lets face it. Being England manager in this day and age is more akin to working in PR than it is to working on the football pitch.

Why not give the job to Max Clifford?

WallaceEMann · Lower Club Player

We lost on Wednesday because we were absolutely useless, to put it mildly.

What annoyed me most about Wednesday night, though, was the fact I've lost my ticket stub. I always keep them as a souvenir win, lose or draw :(

Salmon · Tennis legend

England draw Croatia again. Time to thump them 5-0.

Ratty · County player

I've never quite worked out what a football manager actually does. Especially managers of national teams, who do nothing at all for most of the time.

And anyone who's ever read Daniel Finkelstein's statistical analyses in the Times would doubt that the manager makes much difference anyway.

England's record under Keegan was not that bad, and yet Keegan freely admitted that he didn't have a clue.

Even the records of the "great" managers such as Ferguson and Wenger are probably just down to luck and having loads of cash to throw around. Remember some of Fergie's duff signings: Poborsky, Jordi Cruyff, Djemba Djemba, Taibi, etc etc (and there have been many many more).

john · Top national player

Lol, love the theory Ratty, but I think it's a bit naive and misguided.

Wenger, for example, is an excellent manager who has his team playing proper football which is very attractive to watch. Although he does have a bit of cash to spend every now and then, most of his players have come either on the cheap or free as youngsters. Let's not forget that Wenger signed a certain Thierry Henry as a winger and saw fit to turn him into a striker breaking goalscoring record. Certainly, Henry's previous manager didn't see him as a striker, yet Wenger's wisdom made some small difference there for sure.

Of course, these young players aren't all personally scouted by Wenger but part of the manager's job is to put a scouting system in place and without a doubt Wenger has installed this to perfection.

Just one of Alex Ferguson's many virtues is the fighting spirit instilled in his players. He simply will not allow anything other than total commitment and the amount of points this has translated into over the years through last minute goals etc. is phenomenal.

You can also see through countless examples that a manager has their team playing a certain style of football and this follows them throughout their career. What about Fabio Cappello? When he took over Real Madrid they were a bunch of highly paid superstars who played together but couldn't defend for toffee. A year of Fabio in charge and he had managed to whip them into a TEAM playing proper disciplined football.

I could go on all day about the differences a manager can make to a team and give examples but that'll do for now.