Steve McLaren and Other Issues

Jeremy has tagged me to say what is wrong with the England football team.

Hmmm.
Well, to be fair, McLaren was pretty useless. He will surely go down in history less favourably as England Coach than Graham Taylor did.
Which takes some doing.

But really, the problem is in how England treats its national team. We don't really take it seriously. Even when we do qualify, most of those we rely on have been injured in club football (imagine if Gerrard had been there in 2002).

We chop and change our squad, players don't get used to playing with eachother, good players get left out because of the England tradition of only bothering to watch certain clubs (Owen Hargreaves is a case in point- severly under-rated player, mainly because you have to go to Germany to watch him.

And fact is, we play complacently. With no heart.

England strategy for years was; piss around on the pitch, and wait for the ref to award a free kick. Beckham will score, job done.
This really seemed to be IT.
Goals in open play, not really an England thing. Owen did them now and then, but let's face it, when he doesn't score, he doesn't actually contribute much to the REST of the game. He's just an amazing goalscorer.

And when got a one goal lead, we never pushed it. Tradition was to run around aimlessly, giving away possession, till the other side equalised.

During the last world cup, I was forced to concede, that did I not live here, I wouldn't bother watching England. They just don't play INTERESTING football, or PASSIONATE football. There were so many great games in that tournament- we played none of them.

The rot lies deep, and it's in attitude.

For example, how many tournaments since penalty shoot outs came in, have we LOST to penalty shoot outs? Four or five, at least. We've never WON a penalty shoot out.
But that's how we tend to leave tournaments.

So... Why has penalty shoot out training STILL not become a feature of England's training regime?

Still. At least now, we might sort our act out for the world cup.

I sincerely hope that a particular premiership team, looking for a new manager, does not pick McLaren, however.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired- The Baker's mother had her fiftieth birthday party last night. It was quite a big occasion.

Had a long conversation with Mrs Chimney Sweep. I think she does love him. Perhaps I should be less suspicious. It's hard to be sure. But we had a fairly frank conversation.

On another note, The Baker is really not happy about this blog right now.



Let's just say, a recent post was read by someone I didn't think read the blog- though I knew they knew of it's existence.
That person brought a letter round, by hand. I'm not sure why they thought I'd be in at ten to five, but someone was. The Baker, who had a couple of days off work, to join my flatmate at her first scan. So they talked to The Baker.
I read the letter, and left open by this PC.
Of course, the following day, The Baker was working on the PC, and saw the letter wide open. Absent minded? Yes, that's me.
And he read the letter in question.

He didn't say anything until we are at the party, when he pointed out I looked stressed and said he knew why.

The points he had to make were these.

1. Regardless of my views on the subject, at some points hatchets have to be buried. Maybe I should make some effort in this department. After all, he said, my general approach to this person completely contradicted every principle I hold, and is also completely out of character, compared to the way I treat most other people. He may have a point here.
2. The other, wider point, was his annoyance at allowing an online issue to affect real life. I've been told that once he's moved down here, I'm not being allowed to spend so much time blogging. Or on blogging related tasks. I pointed out that I thought the crisis was pretty much over, and therefore I couldn't see any further issues arising. I fully expected to be able to fit blogging into two hours a night. I get the impression this time limit will be rigidly enforced- especially at weekends.

Well, I don't know. I've not really been able to devote proper time to it of late, nor have posts strictly followed the plan. Several have been spur of the moment ones, usually leading off on complete tangents, not relevant really to anything I'm trying to say here.
I've also been a pisspoor blog visitor, during this recent period. Not visited many of you, or not as often as I'd have liked. Not gone into depth in my comments- and been sloppy at replying to your comments here.



I'm pretty sure we can get back to business as usual, in a way I can post daily, visit every blog on my rolls, at least once every two to three days, the bestest of the best more than that of course, deal with any other blog related commitments that come up, reply to e-mails etc, and still be done with plenty of time for RL commitments.

So to summarise.
Crisis over, introspective drivel over, bad visiting habits over, blog returns to its orginal plan.
So that's Music post tomorrow, new poll on Monday, sequel to the two pevious posts Tuesday.

See you then.