all the ravings about how tight we were defensively is IMO rubbish....we conceded twice to the swedes, looked rocky V ukraine and were ripped apart repeatedly by italy and were lucky not to get hit for 6.
Terry may have thrown his body about in admirable fashion but looked very vulnerable to a simple ball over the top.
Wayne Rooney was not fit and I don't think he is a world class player ever capable of taking a game by the scruff of the neck like ronaldo (much as I hate him)....the world must be scratching their heads at our idolisation of a player who has never produced what he promised...mainly because I believe he is a smoker and has lost the yard of pace to go with his robust strength.
The new batch of player coming through do not look that promising.....we will probably have a very tough defence with richards, cahill, lescott, hart and probably ashley cole....johnson I thought has come on in leaps and bounds.
We have a bit of pace but not much quality up front, the midfield engine is on it's last legs and need replacing so rebuilding this side to make it better will be a tough call.
The main problem is that our english premier league cultivates foreign talent while stifling english talent...we are probably stuck with needing negative hard to beat tactics getting us to the next world cup and hodgson has done a good job wmaking the best of what he has available...although there were some gaps in his squad selection
I'll stick my neck out and say the Premier League is part of the problem. Not a single member of England's squad plays overseas. The Premier League is a physical, high speed drama fest build around TV and a worldwide market. The Spanish and Italian leagues are, for me, slower tempo and more skillful. The German league plays less games and breaks for six weeks, and their domestic structure is better geared towards the national team.
Our players looked knackered last night and the gulf in skill, passing and technique was damning. The Irish depend heavily on English clubs too and were awful at times. Our clubs do well in the Champions League but it runs all season and the foreign players in my view strengthen the teams.
Hardly scientific I know, but there are 34 Spanish based players in Euro 2012, and 28 are still there. 45 players based in Germany, 19 left. 11 play in Portugal and all are still out there. 31 Italian based players,23 left. 77 English based players, only 9 left. 39 went out in the first round.