Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

OK, last time I mention England and Euro 2008…I promise!

Well I think the good old BBC summed it up perfectly when they said

‘All hail the return of the Premier League: a world where Steven Gerrard is a superhero, Frank Lampard ventures into the opposition penalty area and Scott Carson is a very good goalkeeper.’

and now I hear Motty saying

‘The talk about overseas players is a red herring, we simply need our players better coached’

Thank god for that!!
It is about time we acknowledged that the FA is the root of the problem. I respect Trevor Brooking and his views on the coaching of British players, but how the hell is he supposed to do anything with such an antiquated, bureaucratic institution as ?the FA impeding him at every step. You only have to look at the vast list of directors, all well paid and sticking their oars in and simply complicating thing to see the problem. On top of that you have a series of people at the top with no background in football and, if the selection process for the manager’s job last time was anything to go by, no idea how to run things either. The thought of a ‘full root and branch investigation’ strikes me as simply another big, overblown waste of money. Will it actually address the fact that the people hiring in all the consultants to run this review are the problem? Will any consultant actually publish a report damning the very people paying the bills? There is talk of the Premier League being an issue - rubbish. We need to get grass roots sorted out. Teams are bringing over so many kids from abroad because we are not teaching our young talent well enough.
Now, apart from Gareth Southgate and Paul Ince, people have finally stopped waffling on about ‘must be a British manager’ and all the people that are the usual suspects British suspects have ruled themselves out. The simple fact is that none of them are experienced enough at the higher levels of competition. You can argue that Klinsmann did well with Germany, but he was a bit of an anomoly on that front, but now he has experience. So, we now have Capello, Klinsmann, Lippi, Mourinho and, after the Euros, our favourite from last time, Scolari all without jobs. I would not object to any one of those. Shearer though…he may be a decent coach in future (I like his punditry at least) but not now….have we learned nothing!