English Premier League thread

:LOL:

This is all such a farce!!

I would say England's already slim chances to do well in the Euro's evaporated even further tonight.
 
oh boy! pearce or redknapp??!? really? are those the only 2 possible options! Good God, if that's the case, if would be much better for england not to have a coach at all... seriously. just let the FA take the key decisions and be done with it... afterall, it looks like the FA enjoys to play the "coach" role :P

anyway, spurs fans must be jubilant right now. that joke of a coach was the only thing holding tottenham back.... with a proper coach now spurs might actually become a serious player in the epl race.

Gerd, this has nothing to do with "courage" or with england's chances to actually win something. let's be honest if that would have ever been a concern for capello, then he would have never taken the job in the first place. besides capello has always been a man looking for new challenges, and it's absolutely impossible to scare him off. it's very easy to piss him off, but as his experiences in madrid (both times), roma, and milano proved, u simply cannot scare this man off or even just make him feel unconfortable. he's just that tough.

this must have been a very tough decision for fabio. and not only because this will eventually turn out to be the only stain in his unbelievable curriculum and the only challenge he didn't win in his entire carreer...... but because he really loved being england's coach. and that's not just something he said recently only to please his current employers. coaching england's national team has always been his dream, ever since he became a coach (in the early '90s)... he said it countless times to italian journalists through the years... and when the journalists used to ask him "but why england? they're quite an overrated team. the average quality of english players is relatively low and the expectations are even higher than brazil's or italy's.... wouldn't you rather coach italy's national team?", he always replied the same way "no. i love my country and i love our football, but my ultimate professional achievement would be to become england's coach one day. don't ask why, that's just how i feel".
so it must have been everything but easy for fabio to take this decision.... they must have pissed him off really badly to put him in such a position. also the fact that the FA immediately accepted his resignation (wich is a very unusual reaction from an employer) is quite revealing imo.
one thing is for sure, no matter how much capello will miss this job, england is going to miss him much, much more than that.
 
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Hi Ben,

I don't agree at all. IMO he completely failed as England manager.
At the WC England where absolutely abysmal. And i know their team is by far not as good as most English football fans think (quite a lot of the players lack both intelligence, skills and a professional mentality)...but it seemed as if he was completely clueless...

Concerning Terry: knowing England, the public and the so-called English press (tabloids) Fabio had to know that it was his duty not only to take the captain's armband away from Terry, but also to be courageous and declare not to select him. There are several reasons not to select him:
1. he's not good enough anymore, he is a shadow of the player he used to be;
2. the reasons bobby pointed out (far from a role model and a guy who sleeps with a team mate's wife is bad for the team spirit).

One can say what you like about Capello, but he is a clever guy. This was all well planned. He knew bloody well that if did not move concerning Terry, the FA would have to do something and this would give him a way out...he knew bloody well that he has to go to EC with sky high expectations and a group of over-hyped players...besides that he had to endure the usuale circus around the WAG's...one could almost understand that he was fed-up with it all...

I really don't like the way he handled this...

PS: you're right about Redknapp...
 
gerd said:
Hi Ben,

I don't agree at all. IMO he completely failed as England manager.
At the WC England where absolutely abysmal. And i know their team is by far not as good as most English football fans think (quite a lot of the players lack both intelligence, skills and a professional mentality)...but it seemed as if he was completely clueless...

Concerning Terry: knowing England, the public and the so-called English press (tabloids) Fabio had to know that it was his duty not only to take the captain's armband away from Terry, but also to be courageous and declare not to select him. There are several reasons not to select him:
1. he's not good enough anymore, he is a shadow of the player he used to be;
2. the reasons bobby pointed out (far from a role model and a guy who sleeps with a team mate's wife is bad for the team spirit).

One can say what you like about Capello, but he is a clever guy. This was all well planned. He knew bloody well that if did not move concerning Terry, the FA would have to do something and this would give him a way out...he knew bloody well that he has to go to EC with sky high expectations and a group of over-hyped players...besides that he had to endure the usuale circus around the WAG's...one could almost understand that he was fed-up with it all...

I really don't like the way he handled this...

PS: you're right about Redknapp...
Click to expand...

I agree to an extent.

Regarding John Terry, I have to question why Capello gave him the captaincy for a second time? We all know the guy is a complete cretin and disruptive, and on the pitch he's looked a slow, burnt-out figure for some time now. Why give the captaincy to someone who is bad for the team both on a morale and ability level?

More to the point, why do we (read the English press) place so much importance on the captaincy? Let's move on and just rotate it like other countries do. It's not a big deal.

Regarding Capello, I think overall he's done a decent job, nothing spectacular. He had four years in the role and I'm not convinced the England team is much further forward. He arrived with a reputation for discipline and running a tight ship yet let things get out of control in South Africa. After the Euro 2008 qualification farce Capello had the perfect opportunity to clear out the tired old England 'golden generation'. The massive egos that have achieved fuck all on the international stage, like Gerrard, Lampard and Terry. He had the chance to follow Germany's lead and start building a young side from the ground up. It's only in the last year or so that he started to do this, yet I've no doubt all the old favourites would have been on the plane to Poland. Because those are the players the press and the knuckle-dragger element of English support want to see.

We've got plenty of quality, hungry young players in this country. Now we need the manager to build the England team for the next ten years.
 
i too don't get this love fest for Arry. The only magic he has is in the pre/post interviewing...or the car interviewing from the reporter end. He loves the spot light very likable n funny bloke" wheeler dealer" .
VDV said it best his game plan is to go and play our socks out!!! Levy is the puppet master imo. What player has he molded? most of them were ready made ...Bale is the only player of value n he was always on the up .I guess Arry was somewhat responsible back in his Southhampton days.
Uu
As a matter of fact that's probably what England needs a manager that likable to deflect from players and the players will want to play their hardest for...Arry fit perfectly for England. He can get the super treatment from clubs around the land talk to all the bosses keep the media in his pocket and if England do good , sweet for Arry if not he'll crack a joke or 2 and move on.
 
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yep exactly, we need to see a fresh new england team, that is a team and can play together. Use the Euros as much as possible to give the young/new players experience in a big international competition and then build for the next world cup.
 
Jamezinho said:
I agree to an extent.

Regarding John Terry, I have to question why Capello gave him the captaincy for a second time? We all know the guy is a complete cretin and disruptive, and on the pitch he's looked a slow, burnt-out figure for some time now. Why give the captaincy to someone who is bad for the team both on a morale and ability level?

More to the point, why do we (read the English press) place so much importance on the captaincy? Let's move on and just rotate it like other countries do. It's not a big deal.

Regarding Capello, I think overall he's done a decent job, nothing spectacular. He had four years in the role and I'm not convinced the England team is much further forward. He arrived with a reputation for discipline and running a tight ship yet let things get out of control in South Africa. After the Euro 2008 qualification farce Capello had the perfect opportunity to clear out the tired old England 'golden generation'. The massive egos that have achieved fuck all on the international stage, like Gerrard, Lampard and Terry. He had the chance to follow Germany's lead and start building a young side from the ground up. It's only in the last year or so that he started to do this, yet I've no doubt all the old favourites would have been on the plane to Poland. Because those are the players the press and the knuckle-dragger element of English support want to see.

We've got plenty of quality, hungry young players in this country. Now we need the manager to build the England team for the next ten years.
Click to expand...

Basically agree with this, Capello lost the decision once he gave Terry the armband back in the first place, how ridiculous was that and completely undermined Rio at the time.

Regarding using the youngsters back when he arrived i'd say he really didn't have any to use really, ones which I was excited about anyway and it's only recently we've managed to get them coming through and seem to finally have a good 7-8 good players coming through.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
Regarding using the youngsters back when he arrived i'd say he really didn't have any to use really, ones which I was excited about anyway and it's only recently we've managed to get them coming through and seem to finally have a good 7-8 good players coming through.
Click to expand...

Fair point, although that's another indictment of English football. Young players weren't getting their chance in the Premier League as English football was entrenched in short-termism and quick fixes rather than youth development.

Capello had other options though. He carried on with the old favourites longer than perhaps he should have.
 
Can't help thinking that is Arry does take the job (would he - considering how Spurs are doing this season?) we'll end up with a strike force of Defoe & Crouch, with nephew Lampard in midfield ;)

There isn't a lot of choice out there, whether they're English or not. The only person I can think of who wouldn't take shit of the FA would be Fergie, but that would never happen.

I don't mind seeing Pearce take temporary charge. After all, most of us are hoping that youth finally gets a chance, and being the U-21 coach for a while he should have the most knowledge on who could do well in the senior side. The only other unattached English managers I can think of is Warnock, Bruce or Ince...! (Still, having Ince could be interesting for John Terry!)

As for a captain, I'd opt for either Hart or Parker, as they'd be most likely to stay in the starting XI for a while, but that's just me...
 
gerd said:
Hi Ben,

I don't agree at all. IMO he completely failed as England manager.
Click to expand...

wow, that's a bold statement mate! no other england's coach has had a better winning percentage than capello...ever since the 2° world war!!!
i believe in order to talk about failure or success we should establish some standards first.
in just a few months he gave england such balance as i've never seen from this national team. sure it wasn't breathetaking football, but then again u should never expect entertaining football from don fabio. neat, flawless football is what u should expect from capello.... and that's exactly what he provided. strictly speaking about football, the difference between capello's england and mclaren's england (or eriksson's england, or even keegan's england before that), was huge. and that's talking about the fooball played on the pitch.

as for the results, he nailed the world cup qualifying stage (1st place, 9 wins, only 1 loss; 34 goals scored and only 6 conceded)..... those are absolutely incredible numbers for a team wich failed to qualify to euro 2008... only 2 years before. then he got kicked out of the world cup by a much better team (germany only lost to spain in the WC).

and even after the world cup, i honestly can't see why u think they england's performances were abysmal. once again they nailed their euro 2012 qualifying group without loosing a single match.... wich is remarkable, considering montenegro and switzerland were in the same group (don't worry gerd, i'm not that much of a stats-whore... i just took a quick read to england's wikipedia page :P ).

honestly that looks pretty good to me.. i've watched quite a lot of england matches in the last few years (along with italy and germany, england is probably the national team i watched the most), and the team always seemed pretty good to me. sure they had some great games, some good games and also some bad games, but i never felt the team was underperforming (wich was instead my usual feeling during the mclaren era and the eriksson era and the keegan era).
of course i never expected england to win the world cup or to dominate their opponents like spain or germany. i actually think capello's done a pretty good job with what he was given.

of course from capello's point of view, this was not a succesful experience, but that's only because everything short of perfection is considered a failure by capello and because before the england job, he won everywhere he coached.
but from england's point of view, this has been the national team's most succesful period since..... well i can't even tell u since when (probably since before i was borned).

anyway, don't get me wrong, i'm not taking his side (not entirely at least). i also can't figure out why he handled the terry incident like he did (although i'm sure he had his reasons) and i also wouldn't have defended terry's position in the dressing room like he did (although i realize i'm a noob while he's one of the most succesful coaches in history, so my opinion isn't really worth that much).
the only thing i saying..... and trust me, i'm 100% sure of that, is that he didn't exploit this situation to weasel his way out of england. and i know that for a number of reasons:

1- he absolutely loved to be england's coach and there was no other place he'd rather be.

2 - capello is absolutely immune to pressure or mediatic exposure. u think coaching england's national team is a tough job? ask any (and i really mean ANY) real madrid fan or roma fan what capello had to deal with in madrid and roma and they will tell u this was NOTHING compared to the abuse and pressure capello had to endure in those 2 cities. nothing!

3- capello would have never quit to avoid a failure in the euro competition, because (and every italian football fan will confirm u this) nothing is more of a failure to capello than quitting. going out in the group stage without winning a single win or without scoring a goal, even that would have been easier to accept than quitting for capello.
besides, like i already said, if failing would have concerned him, fabio would have never even accepted the england job in the first place.
jamezinho said:
Capello had other options though. He carried on with the old favourites longer than perhaps he should have.
Click to expand...
i'm also not so sure about that (wich seems to be a pretty common criticism to capello). fabio gave a chance to several youngsters and other players who weren't part of the "old guard" (cahill, baines, jones, walker, parker, johnson, rodwell, wellbeck, sturridge, smalling, cleverley, wilshere, carroll.... and theese are only the ones i can remember right now, but there's probably more).
perhaps he could have done even more to rejuvinate the team, but honestly i don't see so many promising english youngsters (apart from the ones i mentioned and that capello already called up).
 
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Well at least Sven had the guts to include Walcott in his squad for the WC.
I'm sure that with a good coach (with a game plan and continuity in the style of playing) you can do very well with decent players and without stars. I'm thinking about players like Jones, Henderson, Wellbeck, Jarvis, Oxlade Chamberlain and others like them together with Hart, Richards, Jagielka, Bent, Walcott and players like that...No more Ferdinand, Terry, Gerrard or even Rooney...

Greece proved that one can have results with tacticall discipline and a coach with a vision. All the players i summed up are better than most players of the Greece team that won the Euro's in 2004. I'm even convinced that you can have a decent result with more offensive minded football as long as you have a coach with a plan and players willing to play according to that plan.

Will this team win the EC? No, but Capello's team would not win either.

Edit: and to reply to Ben, stats don't tell the whole story...but they do mean a lot i must confess. On the other hand, England did loose against Germany, but they could have been eliminated in the group stage too..their football was dire when it really mattered. But maybe i am way too harsh and of course i'm even more of a noob...
 
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gerd said:
Greece proved that one can have results with tacticall discipline and a coach with a vision. All the players i summed up are better than most players of the Greece team that won the Euro's in 2004. I'm even convinced that you can have a decent result with more offensive minded football as long as you have a coach with a plan and players willing to play according to that plan.
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i don't think greece proved anything to be honest. the only thing they proved is that sometimes an underdog can come up with great performances for a short span and get unexpected results.... but we all already knew that. if the best team were meant to win everytime, there would be no point playing the games at all..... but the brutal truth is, most of the times, goliath beats the shit out of david, and that's why teams with a great footballing school and many great players (such as brazil, italy and germany) succeed more often than the likes of greece and are much more likely to win competitions.
euro 2004 was a great experience and i enjoyed it a lot, but we just can't set that as a standard. of course if u set that experience as a standard, then england's performances over the last 4 years should be regarded as a failure, but we both know that's not a realistic benchmark.

you're right, stats only tell half the story, but they can't even be entirely dismissed. i only mentioned those stats to remark how capello's era was not really a failure imo.

however bottom line, i think this is going to be bad for both capello and england. no other coach (surely not redknapp nor pearce) is going to do better than what capello could have done (nor better than what capello has already done).... and also capello won't find a job he could possibly enjoy more than he enjoyed coaching england (assuming he won't retire, of course).
 
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Come on Ben, Greece clearly had a plan, not the most attacking plan, but they had a plan, stuck to it and overachieved...
I know you can replay that EC 50 times and never will Greece win it again, but the only way underdogs can win more than one match is by having a plan. Once is coïncidence, winning a tournament just a litle bit more (in a league the best almost always wins in the end).

Throughout football history the big or succesfull teams had a very clear plan: Sacchi's Milan, Michels' Ajax, Guardiola's Barcelona, but also relative underdogs like Mourinho's Porto, Fergusons Aberdeen, Erikssons Göteborg, Goethals' Marseille, Anderlecht and Standard (perhaps the best example, Goethals won the CL with Marseille, ECII with Anderlecht and reached the final of ECII with Standard in Nou Camp against Barcelona and only lost because of a referee).

The best example is our own national team. In the '80's our national team had a plan (they always played off-side and with the same team) and reached the final of a EC and the semi-final of a WC. Our current national team is much more talented but they don't have a fixed way of playing or players that are disciplined enough, so they underachieve...
 
i'm not saying rehagel didn't have a plan and i'm certainly not saying greece won the euro by a coincidence.
what i'm saying is that u can't set that team as a standard and u can't consider capello's run with england as a failure, only because greece won a tournament with lesser players 8 years ago, as that would not be rational.

like i said in my first post of this discussion, before talking about failure or success, we should set a standard. if your standard is greece '04, then every national team on the planet (bar spain) has been a failure over the last decade (even germany).

a more rational standard would probably be based on what england achieved before capello and on what they could "realistically" achieve with this current squad. and based on that i'd say capello has done a pretty good job and i highly doubt redknapp or pearce will be able to even get close to that.
but of course that's just my personal opinion and i guess time will tell ;)
 
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Look Ben, it's not that important and of course i don't have all the wisdom in the world (very far from that), it was not my intention to set Greece as a standard, it was merely an example of a team with an obvious tactical plan (and in a later post i gave other examples).

But yes, when i look at those statistics it's obvious Capello wasn't as bad as i said. To me personally for a national team coach only the big tournaments show hiw value (unless he can qualify with teams like Liechtenstein or with an ordinary team in a very difficult group).

But nowadays national team coach rarely have the opportunity to lead their teams for more than two big tournaments...it seems the maximum is one WC and one continental tournament...
 
gerd said:
Look Ben, it's not that important and of course i don't have all the wisdom in the world (very far from that), it was not my intention to set Greece as a standard, it was merely an example of a team with an obvious tactical plan (and in a later post i gave other examples).
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you're making it sound as if we were arguing, man. it's just some harmless chat, we simply happen to have different opinions on this, there's nothing wrong with that. :BEER:

btw capello said to an italian journalist he found it most unappropriate to strip terry of the captain armband before a guilty sentence against terry was issued (he was referring to civil justice, not that farce we refer to as "sport justice").
now in theory he's right, but to be honest, i agree with the FA here. terry is a sorry excuse for a man and he never deserved the armband in the first place. and although i agree with jamezinho (we shouldn't make such a big deal of the whole captaincy thing), the captain of a team still represent the image of that team, and even though this england team does not offer much in terms of class and style and education.... terry would never be my first pick anyway.

having said that, the way the FA handled this situation is beyond unbelievable. undermining the coach's authority in front of the players like this, usurping the coach's role (choosing the captain is a field decision) and abusing of their power, without even listening to the coach's reasons. and then, even accepting capello's resignations immediately (without even pretending to refuse the first resignation letter, as it usually happens)...such arrogance, such lack of style and class.
that's the most ironic part imo. the FA did this to preserve the image of english football and the national team, but eventually the remedy turned out to be much worse than the problem itself.
the FA now looks exactly like the kind of federation which would deserve to have a terry to lead their national football team :DOH:
 
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lol! this is getting weird... seriously what's with all this terry love! he doesn't really strike me as a charismatic leader
 
Dont think its about Terry...more about public scrunity . Terry should be guilty before stripping of captaincy. Like the case of the American who killed that Brit in Italy. Guilty then not guilty...such hell she claim to be in.She wants to move back and live in Italy...public scrunity doesnt tell the whole story. For me she did it and Terry needs his day in c:BOP:ourt imo. i know he's no saint but the crime is not about his past but the challenge to prove he is gulty. character assassination is public scrunity and being pressure to do what the ppl want regardless if its outside the law boundaries. Fabio for me left from disgust and the lack of backbone in the F Stance imo.
 
I don't know the full story of either Terry case (The teammates girl one or the Ferdinand trouble) but was he found guilty in either one? If not there isn't a reason to strip him of the captaincy.
I don't like Terry personally, just as a player, I don't see 'it'. But he shouldn't be stripped if he has not been convicted/found guilty of anything.
 
He definitely slept with Bridge's ex-wife. No denial or anything on that.

It's weird, I see England needing a coach that is willing to transition, and to abandon some of the big egos/ players behind in favour of leveraging their rather good young players. It's worth noting that they've been the best European youth team alongside Germany in recent competitions. I'd love to see something like:

-----------------Hart----------------
--Richards--Smalling-Terry---Cole----
----------------Parker---------------
--------Cleverley---Wilshere---------
----Welbeck---------------Sturridge--
----------------Rooney---------------

That's a balanced, strong mix of youth and experience that would serve England well. And it gets rid of Lampard/ Gerrard issues, and keeps Crouch, Walcott and Bent far away from the first XI.
 
I would get rid of Terry, Coleand Rooney from that team.
They represent the intelligency and the work ethos of the old unsuccessfull team. Bent instead of Rooney (and i know Rooney is a much better player, but for the team Bent would be better).
 
gerd said:
I would get rid of Terry, Coleand Rooney from that team.
They represent the intelligency and the work ethos of the old unsuccessfull team. Bent instead of Rooney (and i know Rooney is a much better player, but for the team Bent would be better).
Click to expand...

I'd love to get rid of Terry, but not sure who to replace him with. Maybe one day Jones, but certainly not at the moment. Cole is still the best left back in the prem, and definitely a step above Baines for that role for England.

As for Rooney - he's still England's best player on his day. Fair enough, those days have been few and far between for his country, but you can't leave him out imo. Too proven at the highest level (I think he's the top English scorer in the CL, also has the most United goals in recent years against the big 4 etc).
 
beachryan said:
-----------------Hart----------------
--Richards--Smalling-Terry---Cole----
----------------Parker---------------
--------Cleverley---Wilshere---------
----Welbeck---------------Sturridge--
----------------Rooney---------------
Click to expand...

you can kick terry out by moving richards to centre back and bring in kyle walker to right back. cole is still the best left back we have. also i aint sure about rooney but we aint got no one to replace him. bent is terrible, our league 2 defence kept him quiet in the fa cup game. although we could put sturridge CF cos he don't like the wing does he.. and sinclair on the left
 
------------------------------------------------------ Hart (C) ---------------------------------------------

Richards/Walker ------ Cahill/Lescott/Smalling ----- Jones/Jagielka -------------- Baines/Cole

---------------------------- Parker/Henderson -------------- Barry/Wilshere ---------------------------

Sturridge/Milner ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Young/Johnson

------------------------------------------------- Rooney -------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------ Wellbeck/Wallcott ----------------------------------

other posible: Glen Johnson, Scott Sinclair, Tom Cleverley, Marc Albrighton, Jack Rodwell, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jack Colback, Jonjo Shelvey, Ryan Shawcross, Martin Kelly, Jay Spearing, Nedum Onuoha, Josh McEacharan...


Damn....England has lot´s of great talent, they realy should think of a good coach to get most of them.
 
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