About England and Our World Cup

   Despite supporting Liverpool I don't subscribe to the popular, we support Liverpool so don't want England to succeed ethos, don't get me wrong I can see what people are saying I'm frustrated with the results and performances from what are top quality players, I'm frustrated with the way we play, with the lack of passion, I hate Hodgson as much as the next man and I can't see why he seems to escape criticism when others would have lost their jobs, but above all that I really hate the deep look at ourselves every every two years followed by absolutely nothing changing.  Despite all of that I can't help myself but support England and can't understand why others aren't the same, I'm very proud when our players are selected, especially for the captains role, when Sterling won praise at the World Cup I was glowing, so please don't criticise me or England, allow me my guilty pleasure and let me wallow in my misery every couple of years and hope for better in the future.

   So what went wrong this time in Brazil?  My opinions are perhaps over simplified and people with greater knowledge of tactics etc. than me could possibly give far more detailed answers but I believe there are three main issues.

   Firstly, our players and tactics are not good enough.  There are undoubtably issues with selection. Every Liverpool supporter could tell you Glen Johnson was simply not up to the job at club level, never mind international, every supporter would tell you Wellbeck isn't international standard, yet they are continuously selected in key positions for the national team.  Regardless of the selection I never notice any passion in any of the players they all have it week in week out for their clubs but put on an England shirt and nothing, I put this down to the tactics.  We seem to want to copy the style and tactics of other countries rather allowing the players to be English and play the style they are used to playing every week.  We copy the style of the last World Cup winners, on this occasion Spain and do it very badly, whilst people tell us it's all about possession, we lose our drive and passion, then the World Cup rolls around and we are still trying to play a style from four years ago that not only is outdated but is alien to many of our players, is it any wonder they seem confused and look like they couldn't care less.

   Secondly, to put things simply Roy Hodgson, I don't know what others see in him but for me he is clueless.  He sits on the bench with a confused look on his face for the entire game and appears to react to nothing.  He is outdated In his ideas and systems so doesn't know what to do, the solution, do nothing, keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.  What do we do? Change manager, I don't know for who but let's have somebody with up to date ideas, who can react to situations on the field and can show a bit of passion themselves.

   Thirdly England isn't important any more.  Supporters, managers, clubs, players and administrators all put England well down the order of priorities, for success things need to change it's hard enough for nations to win tournaments when the national team is the most important thing for the players, for example, not behind their clubs, families, sponsorship deals, holidays, endorsements, possible transfers and so on in their list of priorities.  It's probable that things won't ever change but not difficult to understand why we slip down the rankings as the national team slips down players priorities.

   What's the solution, well short term as I have tried to explain a new forward thinking manager with forward thinking ideas and a decent selection policy alongside a hopefully better attitude from a new set of players as we replace the old guard.  Alongside this I agree with some of the policies and schemes in place the National Football Centre, St George's Park has to be a good idea and better coaching for coaches has to mean better coaching for players, more hours coaching per player also has to be good the more the better.  I believe identifying players at a young age and getting them into national set ups is also important other countries such as Spain and Germany seem to move players from junior national teams such as U17 through the Under 21's and in to the full squad, I don't know figures but I think the numbers progressing through from our junior age groups will be far less meaning we are either not identifying the correct players at a younger age or that the players we are selecting are getting let down by coaching etc and not developing to the level that there contemporaries from other countries are.

   Hopefully this time at least some of the faults will be rectified and come the next tournament I will not feel like the only England supporter in the pub as we will have something to be excited about.

@lfclumo