Nothing FAB about England's World Cup campaign

BEATING the Germans was always going to be a big ask but I didn’t quite expect us to go out of the World Cup in such a tragic fashion.

The again, we only scraped through into the final 16, the highlight being a 1-0 victory over Slovenia. Great.

As the final whistle blew on Sunday, and I realised that I had wasted 90 minutes in the sunshine, the main emotion I felt was anger.

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I’m not claiming to know everything there is to know about football and I’m sure Fabio Capello had his reasons for some of the decisions he made, but if I had the chance to question him I’d want to know why he favours Emile Heskey and why he switched him for Defoe - a like for like substitution when we should have been throwing caution to the wind and taking a do or die attitude.

I also thought James Milner was putting a lot of dangerous balls into the box and while I think Joe Cole is a decent player, there’s no way I would have taken Milner off.

The players who should have been sent to the bench, in my opinion, were Barry, Terry and Rooney who I felt were totally ineffective. Maybe Fabio didn’t think his bench was up to it?

And why do we continue to play Gerard and Lampard together in the centre if year after year their performance together suggests that changes should be made.

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I’m afraid my technical analysis ends there although one final point - why did he not bring on the Crouchmaster? The crowd loves Crouchy, he’s tall enough to mix up any defence and let’s face it, fans across the country were crying out for a chance to do the robot.

But alas, Fabio didn’t fancy him. The manager, who had the cheek to tell Gabby Logan in a post-match interview that we “played well” - PLAYED WELL!!!!-stubbornly stuck with his favourites and in my view, it was the manager that cost us the tournament.

But it’s not all about the manager and the players have a massive responsibility whatever formation or first 11 he chooses.

One topic I’ve not yet touched is Lampard’s disallowed goal. How the officials didn’t see the ball was over the line was beyond me and yes, I’d say bring in the technology and put an end to injustices of this kind.

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But the fact is, by that point, our defence had already been shown up twice and goal or no goal, we were not good enough by a long stretch.

It it was up to me, regardless of the costs, I’d get rid of Fabio and bring in Redknapp or Hodgson, the latter my favourite.

Clear our the deadwood and bring in a whole new regime at camp England.

 

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