Fucking England

Smog you're the Garth Crooks of nucastle.

We have loads of good young players, and clubs are playing them so I refuse to buy that. Decent English players are coming through, but maybe not as many as we like. Only Arsenal have consistently played with no English players recently, but Walcott seems to be coming through ok.

The Premiership is the richest and arguably the best league in the world. English players play well in Europe under tactically accomplished managers, the overrated players all do it at club level which many people feel is often higher standard than international football.

I admit Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney and others have been poor recently for England, but there is no doubt that they could play well in the right system and with the right coach.

Hardly, Crooks is a BBC brown tongue... i'd say i'm more of a revolutionary than that

exactly lol

How come competent managers can get these players playing exceptionally at the highest level, i.e. Champions League? Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Rooney, Ferdinand etc are all key players at club level.

Ferguson, Mourinho, Benitez and notable others all get the best out of good English players consistently. Ferguson has often made average players play like superstars through neat and often fantastic football.

We have players to match the best, but our recent national coaches and the country's coaching structure leaves a lot to be desired.

They're just made to look good by being put with a team of foreigners, that's my conclusion.

They are key players for their clubs though, not just secondary. You don't get that far and to that level being carried by foreign team mates. They often outshine their team mates.

Other countries have wide scale foreign imports also.

They prove time and time again that they can't hack it at international level though, when the whole nation depends on them.

I think my point is is that these players already play competently at the highest level, and should be able to do so for England. The top English players have been in the same class as the top foreign players in the premiership and still are. Also, other national teams have problems like us, we are not alone at all... look at Germany a few years back

I'm not defending the star players, they have been awful at times, but we haven't seen a really gifted manager in charge of England for some time. Sven is a good manager, but has little in the way of motivational skills and was also extemely defensive... which is fine for the Italians where defending to them is an artform, but it's suicidal for most English players.

Put it this way, if you are right and our players aren't fantastic, we still have the quality to win tournaments. Denmark and Greece have won tournaments (and many others have come close) without being fantastic (and Denmark only qualified after Yugoslavia were chucked out). They had coaches who played to their strengths, and didn't fanny with formations/tactics/players. Sometimes a settled team is the way forward.

Apologies, I like to witter on about this stuff

I just meant more of a condescending statto really

Haha I try my best

We missed our WORLD CLASS back 4 Red Nev, JT, Rio & Ash. Instead we had the Man City young cb & Rb, Sol no good for Arsenal at CB, the lad who plays more games at lb for Everton @ Cb & Chelsea's 2nd choice lb at lb.