[[Phill]]

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Lol, it would be much harder if england had to play in Croatia. McLaren is a moron. Frank' Fatman' Lampard and Steven' I am a stupid Scouser' Gerard are [censored] together imo.
Stick big Owen Hargreaves in there with Lampard and they will crush it.

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Gerrard is miles better than Lampard. To claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Ive been saying a Hargreaves/Gerrard combo should be the first choice longer than most because its simply the truth.

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Oh, and well done to whoever arranged a friendly for four days before the last game of the qualifying campain. Really earned your salary with that one. Now weve got that 8 foot donkey up front on Wednesday.

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Im ignoring the friendly comment. A friendly is only a bad thing if someone is injured - which in a friendly they never should be. My god, if they arent conditioned enough to play two games in 4 days they dont deserve to pull on an England shirt.

Also, that "donkey" Crouch is the first player to ever reach 10 goals in one calender year - has made 23 England full first team appearances and has scored 13 times. I cant be bothered to look it up, but i know that statistic is NOT 23 full 90 minute games too.

Compare that statistic to Owen - 88 games, 40 goals - and Rooney - 47 games, 19 goals.

Not only does his stats compare, they are better anyway you want to cut it.

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So Israel beat Russia. Great. A stay of execution. Is anyone really that excited? Do any of us really think it matters if we qualify or not? What are our chances next year? Zero.

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Ill take the over on Zero.

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And surely someone has to answer to the fiasco of us still paying Sven his 100k a week (or whatever it was) even a year after he had gone! That should have been a scandal at the FA.

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Sven is the greatest manager we have ever had - bar none. Its a shame he couldnt move beyond his love affair with Beckham.

He had a contract. This contract ran to whenever. To break the contract would cost the FA X amount of millions (probably whatever the length was).

The problem was they signed him to a new contract and then the scandal broke in the News of the World. When this coincided with bad results it was better to get a fresh face rather than take heat from keeping him there - even given the costs.

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England has played terrible, third world, hit and hope football for nearly a decade now and if the FA are allowed to just continue overpaying for managers of average ability we may as well just forget about the international team. Something far more drastic than a new manager is needed.

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How many third world coutnries have achieved in the past decade two Quarter Finals in the World Cup and a Quarter Final in the European Championship?

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Obviously McLaren is answerable to the FA and they sack him if he does a bad job. But does anybody know who the FA is answerable to? Who holds those people to account? Who sacks *them* when *they* do a bad job? I think its about time heads rolled further up the ladder than just the manager. Who is responsible for employing these terrible managers?

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The FA owns football in England - not the other way round. Its a governing body but the details beyond that is hard to find. Its almost like asking who owns the government. Noone owns a (fat) cat [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Most of the problems stem from the FA which owns Wembley, decides the rules, chooses the referees and appoints the coaches of the national teams.

Also, what is interesting is Price William is the President of the FA - but ive no idea if that position has power or if its a show position.

Also McClaren was one of the best choices on the shortlist imo - or at least best choice of two after the media ruined the chances of getting Scolari who imo (and seemingly the FAs opinion) was best.

Interestingly Scolari was named as front runner, then less than 24 hours later had his wife followed by paparatzi and had recieved multiple death threats. Just cos he was English.

Curbishley had achieved basically nothing in his carreer at Chalton. Thankfully Big Sam Allerdice didnt get it as less than two months after McClarens appointment he was implicated in bung scandal in the Panaroma programme.

Then there is Martin O'Neil who would have been a less controversial choice over McClaren.

As it came down McClaren was the least disliked on the list - which in a semi democratic vote style system like the FA had he got the job. The fact he worked under Sven and would have been well known to the board and everyone in the staff at England probably tipped the balance.

There is no evidence anyone else on the shortlist - even Sven himself - would have done worse than McClaren has.