Capello

[mushRTID]

Rumour on twitter he's been offered the job at that rich Russian club and he is considering it.

SOD to England?

[AbsolutDRFC]

Rumour on twitter he's been offered the job at that rich Russian club and he is considering it.

SOD to England?

I hope it's true.

I would love to turn up to Poland/Ukraine without that clown in charge.

How funny would SOD be in charge of England; with post match interviews and telling players to \"take responsibility\".

Where would you start with Shrek?

I can't even bring myself to type anything more (without getting myself into trouble).....

[Standanista]

SOD to England?

It would take us till the 2018 qualifiers to win a game but after that we'd be good for a bit.

[jonnydog]

I can see it now. World Cup Qualifier, we need 3 points to go through and the clock reads 85 minutes. SO'D looks towards the bench and signals a substitute to get prepared. Every fan in the country anticipates a fresh pair of legs up front to seek out that winning kick to take us to the tournament.

... subs Ashley Young and brings on a fifth defender!! There's no finer way to end a match than by consolidation!!  :cheer:

[BillyStubbsTears]

Rumour on twitter he's been offered the job at that rich Russian club and he is considering it.

SOD to England?

I hope it's true.

I would love to turn up to Poland/Ukraine without that clown in charge.

How funny would SOD be in charge of England; with post match interviews and telling players to \"take responsibility\".

Where would you start with Shrek?

I can't even bring myself to type anything more (without getting myself into trouble).....

Interested why you think Capello is a clown. He has by some way the best win ratio of any England manager in the last 40 years. What exactly do you expect him to do when working with patently second rate players?

[RoversAlias]

You cannot possibly judge him on his win rate because the majority of his victories have been against small European fodder. His record against the big countries needs to be the one you consider - at last year's World Cup we faced the United States, Algeria, Slovenia & Germany. We beat only one of those sides, a side not good enough to even make the play-offs of Euro 2012's qualifiers. Most tellingly we got well and truly destroyed by Germany, one of the world's leading teams. He should be judged on his results against the likes of Germany, France, Holland etc. Not on his (sometimes less than simple) victories over Switzerland, Wales, Kazakhstan et al.

[The L J Monk]

Capello has steered us to qualification to two major tournament finals with considerable room to spare. This is a significant improvement on most of those who came before him.

With the quality of players at his disposal he has done an excellent job - which you would expect for £6m a year.

Quarter Finals at the Euros is once again a realistic outcome for the current team, unless they get a favorable draw. Spain, Germany and Holland are better teams than England, whilst France, Italy and Portugal (should they qualify) could also argue the same.

[DonnyNoel]

You cannot possibly judge him on his win rate because the majority of his victories have been against small European fodder.

You can level that quote at nearly all managers though. Since 66 the only \"major\" nation we've beaten in a knockout game was Spain in 96 and that was on penalties. We aren't good enough technically to compete with the nations we think are our peers.

[AbsolutDRFC]

Rumour on twitter he's been offered the job at that rich Russian club and he is considering it.

SOD to England?

I hope it's true.

I would love to turn up to Poland/Ukraine without that clown in charge.

How funny would SOD be in charge of England; with post match interviews and telling players to \"take responsibility\".

Where would you start with Shrek?

I can't even bring myself to type anything more (without getting myself into trouble).....

Interested why you think Capello is a clown. He has by some way the best win ratio of any England manager in the last 40 years. What exactly do you expect him to do when working with patently second rate players?

At the risk of sounding like a certain ex-Rovers manager, I'm not particularly bothered about results. I'm not deluded to think England will ever win a tournament and to be honest, I'd rather we didn't (as the current generation wouldn't deserve to be held in such esteem as Moore, Charlton, Stiles, Banks etc)!

I just want to see some players that care; that want to play for the country because they're proud to pull on the shirt.
Previous managers like Eriksson and Capello haven't been able to exude that feeling across to the players and the players couldn't care less.

Yes, we do have to have some technical ability to progress so far, but putting a shift in will get England much further than anything.

Even in the last 20 years we've had Greece, South Korea, Turkey, Croatia etc all progressing to major semi-finals; yet were they technically better than us?
They most definitely wanted it more than us; and that boils down to playing as a team and being united for a manager they'll run through a brick wall for.

And that's why I've no time for Eriksson & Capello; they've wasted all that talent we did have.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Exactly lads. Since 1966, we have been, on average, about 6-8th best in Europe and 10-12th best in the world, judging by positions in the major tournaments. Capello has achieved something round about that standard, with a set of players who are (in my opinion anyway) nowhere near as good as the ones that some of his predecessors had (relative to world and European standards at the time).

A squad that has to rely on the likes of Barry, Milner, Downing, Cahill, Bent, Crouch, Hart etc as automatic choices is piss poor by current international and previous England standards. It's hard to see what more Capello could be expected to do, especially when his best player is a mardy t**t who has the discipline of a two year old.

Put it another way: which current English manager would do a better job? And why didn't previous England managers do a better job with significantly better squads?

Robson lost a World Cup match to a bloody awful Portugal side, couldn't beat Morocco and had the easiest run ever to a WC semi in 1990. He failed to get us to the EC finals in 84 and his side was annihilated in 1988. And he had the likes of Lineker, Beardsley, Barnes, Waddle, Shilton, Walker, Pearce, Gascoigne etc to call on.

Venables couldn't get us to a final on home turf in  a very poor quality tournament in 96 with probably the best England squad in my lifetime.

And don't even think about Hoddle, Keegan, Taylor etc.

Remember that the squad of players that Capello has steered to two comfortable finals qualifications is probably worse than the one that Maclaren f**ked up with in 2008. And Maclaren was seen as the best English coach available.

Don't blame Capello - blame a country that has failed for the last two generations to produce sufficient quantities of truly world class players - despite paying them the best wages in the world.

[The L J Monk]

Even in the last 20 years we've had Greece, South Korea, Turkey, Croatia etc all progressing to major semi-finals; yet were they technically better than us?

Aside from South Korea and their seemingly endless assistance from the officials I would say that yes they were technically better than us.

[AbsolutDRFC]

There is something else none of us have touched on yet and that's the psychological effects (or excuses!) too....

A number of recent ex-internationals plus some of the current ones have made comments about there being too much \"pressure\" on the team.

Now I could understand it if you're asking the DRFC side (who, let's be fair, don't tend to win every week) to play for England, then they'd find the expectation of winning a tad difficult.

However for particular Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal players to be discussing pressure and expectation levels, surprises me.
As I'd think (and I've got 0% proof here, as I don't go to watch these teams) you'd expect them to be under that level of pressure and expectation every single week in the Premiership and Europe?
So why would they complain about it, playing for their country?