The England squad needs to be completely started from scratch, the slate needs to be wiped clean. The next manager or if Capello ends up staying on needs to go out looking for fresh young skilled players. No more old players, we need players who are young, fit, fast and agile.
England always seemed to be knackered before the first half was even over with. We cannot hope to win with these old timers.
The problem I see is this. When choosing which players are to play for England all they've done is looked at which football clubs top the premiership, looked at each of those clubs for English players and plonked all those English players into the England squad.
It's nothing to do with their skill, or studying them play.
Just because these players are in the top 3 clubs of the premiership does not mean they are good players. It's the foreign players in those squads that are responsible for those clubs being top of the premiership not the English players. They would still be top of the table without the English players.
Look at Rooney for example, without Ronaldo by his side and the other highly skilled players from such nations as Brazil or Argentina he would be a shit footballer and we saw this was the case in the World Cup. Without these top highly skilled foreign players by his side at Manchester United he is a nobody.
It's time to look further afield and beyond the top premiership clubs. Time to study English footballers on a one on one basis and grade their skill, fitness and attitude and then create a new England squad from scratch.
Well considering Rooney played the last season with no Ronaldo and had a fanstastic goal scoring year pretty much as United's only striker most of the time would seem to dispel this, as would the fact that Liverpool tend to be at their shittest without Gerrard (or Torres to be fair).
Meanwhile of course you could argue Ronaldo had a less than stellar season without Rooney!
I'm not disagreeing that England need to rebuild but you'd have to be an insane manager to not build your front line around Rooney. One bad world cup doesn't make a bad player in the same way that one good world cup doesn't make a player a world beater.
I think your post sums up the English disease. Our team is either shit, or they're the greatest team ever! We're brilliant or we're rubbish, when the truth is usually in between. For some reason the media especially can't allow us to be ok, or better than average, or quite good.
Same with Rooney, you're essentially saying he's a terrible player, which he's not. He's a very good player who had a poor tournament-maybe because of how we played, or the manager, or his own inflated sense of self importance, or because of expectation etc etc...for whatever the reason he won't stop being about the best player we have.
Whether he really is as brilliant as people claim, is a Ronaldo or a Messi etc, is perhaps a debate that can be had but clearly he has to remain part of the England set up (but like everyone else he has to play/be dropped based on form/tactics rather than always having to play.)
Anyone else hoping that Capello stays?
