but not until the 3rd minute of injury time.
A friendly win…another one…two on the trot…substitutions making the team better not worse…what is happening to Sven these days ?
All told a good win at Anfield last night, with stunning performance from Joe Cole. No Matter what you they say about Mourinho and his antics there’s no doubt he’s overseen Cole rise from having the potential to actually putting it into practice game after game.
All night he ran at the Uruguay defence taking either 3 or 4 of the opposition players with him and still managed in most cases to keep the ball or use it effectively, setting up Crouch’s equaliser and deservedly getting the winner. And in the process highlighting the deficiencies on the other side of the park.
Yet again Beckham was shown up to be more cart horse than show pony, do England really need him to sell shirts ? Or do we need someone who runs at defences, gets to the byline and crosses the ball all done with great pace. I’d rather have the latter with Shaun Wright-Phillips, Sven of course wants a guy that can’t beat any defender and ends up putting simple diagonal crosses into the box that teams find so easy to defend.
The difference between the England captain and his replacement was so glaring that there was even, finally, some anti-Beckham noises made by the B.B.C. pundits – and not just from Wright-Phillips dad.
Apart from Cole’s performance I don’t know which was the best part of the night half the England team being Spurs players (well 5 out of 11) – Carrick surely played his way into the World Cup squad with a confident display, but I still can’t see the point of Jenas – or the fact they got the win without Rooney on the park. All we hear is Rooney has to stay fit or England don’t have a hope in hell but Sven has finally found a plan B.
In fact the big name players were the ones that didn’t really perform, as said Beckham, and Gerrard was pretty poor for his 45 minutes. He didn’t gel with the holding midfielder Carrick the way Lampard did with King. Space in front of the back 4 taken up with Carrick, space behind the striker taken up by Rooney, Cole running the left Beckham on the right there seemed nowhere for Gerrard to go to get a grip on the game and impose himself and those glory balls always seem to be over hit for England unlike for ‘Pool.
Rio another lazy run-out, they’re becoming quite frequent, can’t afford a slack performance like in Germany. Darren Bent well who knows, if Sven takes five strikers he’ll go if it’s only four then I know I’m biased but Defoe has to be number 4, he’s shown more class over a longer period of time.
The worst part really has to be Bridge going off injured in another friendly fire incident involving Paul Robinson (following Michael Owen’s broken foot). It really is something you don’t want to see, keeper and left fullback colliding – England don’t have enough leftbacks, why wasn’t Konchesky not picked for the squad ? Left with no leftbacks Carragher has to fill in and while he’s as good as anyone with the defending part the chances of him crossing the halfway line is slim and with Cole playing so well how good would an overlapping fullback be ? Why not use Ledley King on the left and Carragher in the middle ?
And if Robinson is injured oh god it’s Calamity James back in goal. 😯
Anyway the best bit well it’s really between Crouch and Wright-Phillips walking out from the bench together Crouch at 6 feet 7 inches the tallest player in the squad next to the smallest at 5 feet 5 inches,. And Crouch’s shirt having the number 21 on the front of his shirt and 12 on the back.
Well made me laugh…and think of Rush, hence the post’s title.