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.

England Shambles

To prevent my possible finger dislocation as I type my rant I will break my thoughts on England's 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic into nice bite-size chunks of vitriol and bile.

First up: England managers and THE BIG NAME.

Both Sven and McClaren would constantly include players who were either patently unfit or dreadfully out of form whether there were obvious replacements or not.

How many times have we seen Gerrard wasted on the left to accomodate Lampard and a holding midfielder in the middle with Beckham on the right?

But in comes Fabio and his iron will and pragmatic ruthlessness would have none of that BIG NAME bias.

Tonight he started with an England midfield of Gerrard on the left, Lampard and Barry in the middle and Beckham on the right.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, which translates as "Oh Christ, here we go again."

Just to drag the dying coals over this issue let me go over why that midfield not only doesn't work but has never worked at any time that it has been tried.

1) Steven Gerrard I am biased as I'm a Liverpool fan and have watched this man carry my beloved side on his shoulders even in the biggest games. However I have never seen him play a good game when played as a left-winger, mainly as he isn't a left-winger, right-winger (to some extent the exception), defensive midfielder, right back or secondary striker (and yes he has played all of those positions for England).

He is an attacking central midfielder, in my opinion the best in the country due to his range of through-balls and his striking.

Tonight he was not at his best by a long shot, make no bones about it, but he certainly tried, made some decent runs and hit a couple of solid if unspectacular shots. However particularly in the second half his passing went awry mainly as he was trying to use his right foot on the run when his left foot was the natural option.

The argument that Gerrard is so good he can play anywhere is moot. No matter how good Gerrard is in central midfield, he is nowhere near as good as players like Ashley Young, Joe Cole or even Stewart Downing when it comes to the left wing. But Young and Downing are not BIG NAMES, why Cole wasn't emplyed is explained by Capello's continuation of the great English managerial folly:

trying to play Gerrard, Lampard and Beckham at the same time.

In my next post: Frank Lampard, the modern day David Platt, in a bad way.