Calm said:
Agreed Poggy; we all know England has the potential to win the cup but, just like Brazil, for some reason it's not happening.
I think England should try next game to play with 5 midfielders, if Hargreaves is playing in the middle behind Lampard and Gerrard they can focus on attacking and not worry about coming back to cover the holes they left; question is, do you take out the not-so-in-form Rooney or Crouch, who is the only English striker who scored so far.
Theres just one problem with a England 5 man midfield, we have no striker who can play up front with it. The only one who could was carried off on a stretcher last night. Both Rooney and Crouch drop back into the hole or midfield too much to play it. Thats why we had problems when Crouch played up front by himself in the second half against Paraguay.
As for Hargreaves in the anchor role, no thanks, he's not good enough and I'm not a England fan who's not seen him play. I've seen a bit of him and he's just not good enough for me. Carrick on the other hand would be perfect, plus he knows Lampard well from their West Ham days. He's a better tackler and passer than Hargreaves, but Sven won't use him, like Walcott he seems to have just took him to make up the numbers.
On another note, the Owen injury just shows how bad a coach/manager Sven is. First he took only 3 strikers, as Walcott isn't a striker, but a winger. Plus out of the 3 of them 1 was coming back from a very long injury and is now injured again. Another was a doubt which turns out was nothing like the injury they made out it was. Rooney had broken the soft under bone in his foot and not the double break Man Utd lead eveyone to believe. So his return isn't the amazing feat we was left to believe. Personally I'd have took Dafoe as forth striker and not midfielder Jenas, another who won't see the pitch.
