Arsenal look set to show England how it's done

[Mosiah]

Arsenal look set to show England how it's done

Thu Nov 22, 2007 2:00am GMT
By Martyn Herman
LONDON, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Arsenal resume battle with Manchester United at the top of the Premier League on Saturday as England football fans come to terms with the midweek failure of the national side to reach the finals of Euro 2008.
At least none of Arsenal's likely starting line-up against Wigan will be suffering a bruised ego as manager Arsene Wenger is expected to field a completely foreign side.
In fact the Gunners should give another stark illustration of what the England team lack as their brand of slick, passing football will surely sweep away a struggling Wigan side who have lost seven league games in a row.
On current form Arsenal could run up a cricket score, especially as Wigan, 4-0 losers at Tottenham Hotspur last week, are in some disarray having seen their unveiling of Steve Bruce as new manager put on ice after late hitches.
United, who also had no representatives in England's crushing Wembley defeat to Croatia owing to Rio Ferdinand's suspension and Wayne Rooney's injury, travel to Bolton, who like Wigan are in the relegation zone.
Bolton, however, are at least showing some signs of revival under new manager Gary Megson and will be no pushovers for a United side unbeaten in the league since August.
United could have central defender Nemanja Vidic back now that Serbia's re-arranged match against Kazakhstan no longer has any influence on Euro 2008 qualification.
Arsenal and United are level on 30 points, four better off than third-placed Manchester City who host Reading aiming to continue their 100 percent record at home this season.
CHELSEA BLUES
Fourth-placed Chelsea, a point further back, are at bottom club Derby County.
Derby, beaten 5-0 at home by West Ham United last time out, appear doomed already and could be the ideal opponents for Chelsea's England players Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips to shake off the Wembley blues.
Chelsea, who lost ground on Arsenal and United when they drew with Everton, will be without Ricardo Carvalho who faces eight weeks out with a back injury.
Ashley Cole could return, however, from an ankle injury while captain John Terry trained with England and could come into contention.
Newcastle United have a familiar problem as they host fifth-placed Liverpool after Michael Owen was injured playing for England against Austria last Friday and is ruled out.
Liverpool have struggled to find their rhythm this season although an 8-0 European victory over Besiktas followed by a 2-0 win against Fulham has taken the spotlight off manager Rafael Benitez slightly.
Whether or not striker Peter Crouch gets a game, however, is doubtful, even if he was one of England's best players against Croatia when he struck a superb goal.
Elsewhere, high-flying Portsmouth travel to Birmingham whose manager Steve Bruce looks to be heading to Wigan, while on Sunday West Ham United host Tottenham Hotspur who have not lost since Juande Ramos took over from martin Jol.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Ossian Shine)

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

doLoginMenu(); doWeatherFrame();function revSciPixel() { DM_cat("reuters.co.uk > ");DM_tag();}revSciPixel();

[Sir X]

England is now a second-world football nation
By JEFF POWELL - More by this author »

Last updated at 21:17pm on 22nd November 2007

Comments

For millions in this country it was as if the blindfolds had been torn from their eyes to reveal football in all its dazzling brilliance.

They saw the light just as their forefathers had been shown the old game in all its new and beautiful possibilities over half a century before.



Outclassed: Gerrard was outplayed in midfield
Read more...

England's stars of rich league are poor relations
England have 'too many egos, too many big heads', blasts Sunderland boss Keane
Terminated McClaren: Being sacked by England is the 'saddest day of my career'
I've failed and paid the price but I'll bounce back, says sacked England boss McClaren
Pompey boss Redknapp: I'd love England job but I can't see it coming my way
Newcastle boss Allardyce rules out England job
Russia coach Hiddink glad to receive 'surprise' present of England's defeat
England's golden generation end their international careers in failure

Suddenly they understood what men with long memories had been telling them about the November day in 1953 when Ferenc Puskas and his Magyars came to Wembley and played football with a deftness of touch and a flourish of genius never before contemplated in this, the birthplace of the world game.

That was at the old Wembley.

Come this Wednesday evening, it was Croatia's turn to light up the new Wembley with football of such a high technical order that the English once again looked like Luddites trapped in the dark recesses of the industrial revolution.

It was Steve McClaren's good fortune — yes, luck is comparative — that the scale of the loss was not as crushing as England's first, historic defeat by non-British opposition on this once hallowed but now crumbling acre of turf in north-west London.

Hungary won 6-3, then went on to compound that seismic result with a 7-1 aftershock in Budapest six months later.

Croatia triumphed 3-2 but it could easily have been six or seven.

The comparisons of quality are identical. Here, for all to witness, was the same yawning gulf in technical skills, a similar disparity in incisive movement, the equally embarrassing difference between sophisticated European intelligence and a typically chronic failure of English education.

For recent generations of football followers, being comprehensively outclassed by Croatia will come as an even greater surprise than the home defeat which has denied England access to the finals of a major championship.

To those of us old enough to have grown weary of the blinkered English refusal to recognise the need for reform and modernisation, this comes as the end to an interminable and agonised wait beside the bedside for a long-suffering relative to succumb to a terminal illness.

Down the four decades of decay which have followed the solitary World Cup glory of 1966, we have watched the FA preside over the blinkered arrogance of English football.

Whenchairman GeoffThompson announces a root and branch examination of the structure of the national team operation, he is a rabbit trapped in the headlights of the national game's irrationally bloated ego.

What he should be calling for is a tree and forest revision of English football in its entirety.

Frankly, I am now past caring whether the new manager comes from England or Mars. The concept of this country being one of the major World Cup powers, for whom it would be a disgrace to hire a foreign mercenary, has given way to admission that this is now a second-world football nation.

Nor is the identity of the next head on the chopping block of over-riding importance. At best, Martin O'Neill, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klinsmann, Frank Rijkaard, Harry Redknapp or Steve Coppell can only offer a short-term fix.

The long game is not the one which saw English players belting the ball the soggy length of the Wembley pitch in the hope of locating the Crouching Tower of Peter: it is to establish academies of technical excellence at which hitherto football-illiterate English youngsters can receive a degree education from coaches who have completed their studies at the higher universities of the international game.

This seminal moment has been delayed by the capacity of England's players to overcome more gifted opponents by sheer will and brute force. By physical effort alone, they have won games they should have lost.

There was no shortage of that commitment on Wednesday. How easy it is to cite the gigantic incomes of the modern players as the explanation for their failures; and how facile.

None of them wanted to be embarrassed by Croatians advertising how much more they would deserve to earn if they drummed up a transfer to England.

The problem was not that England played from their pockets, but that they played with their hearts instead of their heads.

Hoisting long, high balls in frantic pursuit of that moribund tactic was as lumpen as it was suicidal.

Money is not so much a problem with the players as with the moguls of the Premier League.

Too many leading club directors — key members of whom were in disproportionately powerful evidence on the gallows as McClaren was executed yesterday morning — have England as their ego trip, not their priority.

As they had no shame in ' admitting, far from volunteering to operate a unilateral limit on the number of foreigners they recruit, the mega-clubs excuse their need to hire marquee celebrities from overseas as essential if they are recoup their lavish financial investments.

These hypocrites are paying lip service to England while closing their doors to English potential.

Someone should warn them how easily they might get caught in their own money trap.

If they bankrupt England of home-grown talent, they risk their own destitution.

Already, most of the clubs below the gang of four Champions League giants are playing to partially empty stadia.

Wembley risks becoming an albatross around English football's neck if the national team of bulging muscularity can no longer bully its opponents.

Now that smaller nations like Croatia have caught up physically, the game is up.

There was a time when English coaches were sent abroad as missionaries. Now, after years of reliance on strength and long ball statistics, they are prophets without honour in their own land.

Be honest, who would you rather have had playing for our national pride on Wednesday: Croatia's unheralded technicians or England's headless chickens?

Not so much up and under, as over and out of Euro 2008.

[OJ]

if you had a choice between walcott and bent who do you choose. Hell if you have a choice between shuant wright and walcott? who do you choose. I am biased but england made thier bed lie in it.

[Lambsbread]

Yuh lot might find it funny but with England not making a major tournament that will affect us directly. Our talented players will now find it harder to earn from they trade in that country. Foreign players will be limited now to the cream of the crop & we ain't in that catergory.

[Shatta]

England's time is up and its our time now. They had their run and like everything else it must come to an end.

Its okay I know we are scared but its within the mental capacity of black people to build their own. The good book done tell us that as it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end

so how we a try go round the book of life so like we no see it clear that we are living in the end days?

Its like we lost faith

Chief Servant to the streets

[Gamma]

ok..then we go to norway, sweden, beligium, usa, france.....we should not be a one trick pony!

[Sir X]

England will not put a cap on forgein players what they will do is put a salary cap on young english talent , forcing clubs to 1st find the best english youth at below rock bottom salaries.

Football is a business , you think england is going to mash up its cash cow fe national pride , some would argue being the richest league in europe is a part of that national pride.The only logical step is the salary cap and youth development at the school level.

[Sir X]

Think about it if they loose 1 billion for not being in the Euro Cup every 2 years , how much do they loose a year if the prem looses its luster?

Also how much of that 1 billion can be attributed to the fact that the prem brand name is attached to that loss of revenue .

We have to keep in mind these are media statements designed to do one thing , sell papers and to use any avenue , racial, ethnic , homophobic paranoia all the better more papers will be sold .

[Karl]

England is now a second-world football nation
By JEFF POWELL - More by this author »

Last updated at 21:17pm on 22nd November 2007

Comments

For millions in this country it was as if the blindfolds had been torn from their eyes to reveal football in all its dazzling brilliance.

They saw the light just as their forefathers had been shown the old game in all its new and beautiful possibilities over half a century before.



Outclassed: Gerrard was outplayed in midfield
Read more...

England's stars of rich league are poor relations
England have 'too many egos, too many big heads', blasts Sunderland boss Keane
Terminated McClaren: Being sacked by England is the 'saddest day of my career'
I've failed and paid the price but I'll bounce back, says sacked England boss McClaren
Pompey boss Redknapp: I'd love England job but I can't see it coming my way
Newcastle boss Allardyce rules out England job
Russia coach Hiddink glad to receive 'surprise' present of England's defeat
England's golden generation end their international careers in failure

Suddenly they understood what men with long memories had been telling them about the November day in 1953 when Ferenc Puskas and his Magyars came to Wembley and played football with a deftness of touch and a flourish of genius never before contemplated in this, the birthplace of the world game.

That was at the old Wembley.

Come this Wednesday evening, it was Croatia's turn to light up the new Wembley with football of such a high technical order that the English once again looked like Luddites trapped in the dark recesses of the industrial revolution.

It was Steve McClaren's good fortune — yes, luck is comparative — that the scale of the loss was not as crushing as England's first, historic defeat by non-British opposition on this once hallowed but now crumbling acre of turf in north-west London.

Hungary won 6-3, then went on to compound that seismic result with a 7-1 aftershock in Budapest six months later.

Croatia triumphed 3-2 but it could easily have been six or seven.

The comparisons of quality are identical. Here, for all to witness, was the same yawning gulf in technical skills, a similar disparity in incisive movement, the equally embarrassing difference between sophisticated European intelligence and a typically chronic failure of English education.

For recent generations of football followers, being comprehensively outclassed by Croatia will come as an even greater surprise than the home defeat which has denied England access to the finals of a major championship.

To those of us old enough to have grown weary of the blinkered English refusal to recognise the need for reform and modernisation, this comes as the end to an interminable and agonised wait beside the bedside for a long-suffering relative to succumb to a terminal illness.

Down the four decades of decay which have followed the solitary World Cup glory of 1966, we have watched the FA preside over the blinkered arrogance of English football.

Whenchairman GeoffThompson announces a root and branch examination of the structure of the national team operation, he is a rabbit trapped in the headlights of the national game's irrationally bloated ego.

What he should be calling for is a tree and forest revision of English football in its entirety.

Frankly, I am now past caring whether the new manager comes from England or Mars. The concept of this country being one of the major World Cup powers, for whom it would be a disgrace to hire a foreign mercenary, has given way to admission that this is now a second-world football nation.

Nor is the identity of the next head on the chopping block of over-riding importance. At best, Martin O'Neill, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klinsmann, Frank Rijkaard, Harry Redknapp or Steve Coppell can only offer a short-term fix.

The long game is not the one which saw English players belting the ball the soggy length of the Wembley pitch in the hope of locating the Crouching Tower of Peter: it is to establish academies of technical excellence at which hitherto football-illiterate English youngsters can receive a degree education from coaches who have completed their studies at the higher universities of the international game.

This seminal moment has been delayed by the capacity of England's players to overcome more gifted opponents by sheer will and brute force. By physical effort alone, they have won games they should have lost.

There was no shortage of that commitment on Wednesday. How easy it is to cite the gigantic incomes of the modern players as the explanation for their failures; and how facile.

None of them wanted to be embarrassed by Croatians advertising how much more they would deserve to earn if they drummed up a transfer to England.

The problem was not that England played from their pockets, but that they played with their hearts instead of their heads.

Hoisting long, high balls in frantic pursuit of that moribund tactic was as lumpen as it was suicidal.

Money is not so much a problem with the players as with the moguls of the Premier League.

Too many leading club directors — key members of whom were in disproportionately powerful evidence on the gallows as McClaren was executed yesterday morning — have England as their ego trip, not their priority.

As they had no shame in ' admitting, far from volunteering to operate a unilateral limit on the number of foreigners they recruit, the mega-clubs excuse their need to hire marquee celebrities from overseas as essential if they are recoup their lavish financial investments.

These hypocrites are paying lip service to England while closing their doors to English potential.

Someone should warn them how easily they might get caught in their own money trap.

If they bankrupt England of home-grown talent, they risk their own destitution.

Already, most of the clubs below the gang of four Champions League giants are playing to partially empty stadia.

Wembley risks becoming an albatross around English football's neck if the national team of bulging muscularity can no longer bully its opponents.

Now that smaller nations like Croatia have caught up physically, the game is up.

There was a time when English coaches were sent abroad as missionaries. Now, after years of reliance on strength and long ball statistics, they are prophets without honour in their own land.

Be honest, who would you rather have had playing for our national pride on Wednesday: Croatia's unheralded technicians or England's headless chickens?

Not so much up and under, as over and out of Euro 2008.

Nice! (That overused un-explainable word!) ...nice article!

Thinking of our football and our TEAM REGGAE BOYZ pursuit of a trip to the World Cup 2010 - The article should point the way on how to, in a dispassionate manner, look at the technical attributes of our Reggae Boyz and indeed, TEAM REGGAE BOYZ!

With tongue in cheek - It would not be too much to view Arsenal of England last 12 games! There is the stack contrast of of Arsenal players putting on display their technical skills with excellent moving and passing...and, they doing same for entire 90 minutes of football and our REGGAE BOYZ going same for 'teeny-weeny' minutes of game one vs El Salvador and even less than 'teeny-weeny' time vs Guatemala?

Such is the gulf between a real TEAM and our REGGAE BOYZ that only show potential to be TEAM!

I make no apologies - Our second game when compared to our first was downright disgustingly horrible!

[OJ]

x you have come the closest in addressing it. The young english players are overated and overpriced. Its easier to get a Frabegras from spain at 16 for 35k than a walcot for 16million.. That really is the issue with english football.

[Mosiah]

I make no apologies - Our second game when compared to our first was downright disgustingly horrible!

Is that because our best midfielder (Bibi) was not there?

[Karl]

Is that because our best midfielder (Bibi) was not there?

Just take a look at where we are trying to go - TOP OF THE WORLD - and then compare our last two matches, after which I hope you will give us your take?
Thank you!

btw - If you did not know... - Damn Tappa taught that for yeeeeeeeeeeeaes by a dnd through his play. - ...as it relates to Bibi there was no one in that 2nd match moving around as he did in the 1st...making self, all across the field, available as support passing option. Just that 'showing'...making himself always available was by and of itself, saying 'pass the ball...keep passing the ball...retain possession'!

It was a damn good teaching leason by Bibi!