England have failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 championships being beaten 2 – 3 by Croatia at Wembley last night. Things got off to the worse possible start; Scott Carson missing what should have been an easy save fumbling into his own net to gift Croatia a 0 – 1 lead in the 8th minute, hardly a auspicious start to Carson’s first international cap. And it got worse six minutes later; Ivica Olic literally running around Carson for an easy tap in, 14 minutes gone and two goals down, it really couldn’t be much worse! Things stabilised and England started to find their feet on a rain soaked Wembley pitch managing to get to half time without any more blunders. Suddenly 10 minutes after the half time break; England were given a ray of sunshine on a rainy day. Jermain Defoe was fouled in the 18 yard box and Frank Lampard made sure of converting the spot kick. David Beckham was brought on and suddenly England had some width to their play and Beckham’s crosses caused the Croatians problems in the box. Peter Crouch levelled things for England chesting down Beckham’s cross and smashing the ball into the back of the Croatian net. Suddenly England had hope of qualifying; but were still being outplayed on the field and were lucky to be level as Croatia went close on many occasions. Mladen Petric won it for the visitors with an audacious shot from 25 yards to defeat Carson from long range for the second time. Frankly England were the second best team out there on the Wembley pitch and deserved to lose, we can have no complaints on that score. So Steve McClaren has been sacked as has Terry Venables and justifiably so; frankly their team selections have been poor, dropping Beckham in the first instance was a huge mistake; Beckham is such an influential player. And giving Carson his first cap in such a vital game is a mistake of epic proportions. I said yesterday that McClaren’s negative formations would be England’s downfall and I was right as was shown in the first 14 minutes. The players have to take a lot of the blame as well; frankly for a bunch of players that are paid hundreds of thousands every week; they under performed badly; it seems that many of the players don’t have the passion to play for their country. They seem to expect to be picked rather than hope to be picked to represent their country, big changes need to happen and the English FA needs to take a long hard look at football in this country. So the search for a new manager has already begun and top of the list is Jose Mourinho, I don’t like him as a person; but no-one can deny his credentials.
I’ve just read that McClaren will be getting 2m pounds compensation for terminating his contract early. Frankly if it was any other job; if he underperformed this badly he would have been fired without any sort of severance. As an England manager you are expected at minimum to qualify for tournaments; he couldn’t even manage that in a relatively soft group, England should have won the group with ease, being beaten to second by Russia… That’s disgraceful… McClaren doesn’t deserve a penny, he’s underperformed really badly!
Why in the hell can’t Plymouth hang onto managers? Ian Holloway has tendered his resignation to the Plymouth board and is in talks with Leicester City today. This indicates that he is off to Leicester City and could be in charge by Saturday’s fixture against Bristol City. I am sorely disappointed in Holloway; I really thought he was going to be the man to move the club forward, maybe even to the Premiership. This doesn’t bode well for Plymouth’s trip to Bramall Lane on Saturday; I hope that Argyle don’t start to slide down the table after establishing themselves as play-off candidates under Holloway. He has done much for the club over the past year but it’s hard to not feel angry after all his words about being committed to the club. It seems that there really is no loyalty in football; especially when it comes to Argyle, four managers in four seasons; that’s really bad for progressing as a team, stability is the key to success in football! I hope that Leicester have deep pockets as Holloway still have 18 months to run on his contract. He could have had a job for life at Home Park; but he has elected to go to a team that is 10 places lower than Argyle in the league, probably tempted away by more money, I hope that Paul Stapleton refuses to let Holloway out of his contract until Leicester pay Argyle significant compensation. Holloway is contracted until May 2009 and the Plymouth Argyle board could make Holloway’s life difficult; a contract is legally binding and can not be broken without mutual consent!
