England Shambles 2

2) Frank Lampard. For Chelsea fans a name that brings forth images of goals, glory and admiration. For England fans a name that promotes quizzical head-scratching and a fervent hope that maybe this game he will do something.

Tonight he lived up to his England reputation, generally walking around looking aimless and pointing at opposition players for someone else to mark to give the impression of leadership. Loose passing, unimaginative picking the ball up from one central defender to deftly pass it 10 yards to the other central defender, shying away from the tricky pass forward in preference to the more accomplished-looking 20 yard square ball that doesn't help much, all quintessential elements to a disappointing Lampard midfield performance.

What Lampard can do as well as anyone in the game is arrive late in the box and finish. At this he is exceptionally good for his club and his club gives him the freedom to do this by having a midfield built to allow him to run forward at will.

A lot like this man did for England:

David Platt, brilliant at arriving late in the box and scoring, so good Graham Taylor preferred his strikers to both run towards the defending full-backs just to make space for him.

However as my late, great, ex-professional football playing Grandfather would say "He runs around like a headless chicken and can't trap a bag of cement", I would add "couldn't pass piss with a cholostomy."

Basically Platt contributed very little to the game outside of his goals and the team suffered overall in later years as the team had to be built around his singular ability to make playing him worthwhile.

Which is how Lampard has been now for a number of years for England, the difference being he doesn't score very often.

Gerrard and Lampard are vying for the same position. If Gerrard doesn't score he will usually contribute with his box-to-box work, his tackling, his much more astute and ambitious passing plus he has shown he can play well with Barry, both of them filling in for each other and takingit in turns running forward or defending.

Lampard gives you goals (but not often for England), inferior passing and his positional sense and desire to get back and defend are not fantastic. He wants to be up the pitch, running beyond strikers which is understandable as that is what he is best at, but the England side is not built purely for him to go charging forward and tonight, too often, Barry was trying to cover 2 players running at him while Lampard ambled past Rooney.

As with previous managers, you have to choose between Lampard and Gerrard and play one of them. As with previous managers, Capello seems reluctant to drop one of them.