Five Point Guide For McLaren

Filed in archive England on August 2, 2006

image: 4thegame.com

The good people at Football365 have put together a five point plan to help Steve McLaren in his new job. They're all sensible enough suggestions:

• Make Terry Captain
  


• Sort Out The Lampard/Gerrard Situation
  


• Get Over The Top Four
  


• Ignore The Media
  


• Entertain Us

For the complete article, click here.

Not sure making Terry captain is so important. The most important thing was not letting Beckham keep the armband, and Goldenballs sorted that out himself. Gerrard or Terry? Can't lose really.

The second and third points are the most important. The Gerrard/Lampard thing has never really worked. F365 are right when they say "Even with a holding player sitting behind both of them, a solution that has often been suggested, they made the same runs and, more often than not, got in each other's way." And after the World Cup there's only one winner in a Lampard v Gerrard head to head.

Sven's reliance on the top four was embarrassing. Would Walcott have gone to the World Cup if he hadn't signed for Arsenal? Would Darren Bent have had more than 45 minutes to prove himself in an England shirt if he didn't play for Charlton? Limiting England teams to the Champion's League clubs damages the depth of the squad.

Point number four is an existential paradox, and number five is optimistic, but I'd like to add a sixth point to the list:

• Make Friendlies Worthwhile

Sven persisted with the crazy notion of starting with his strongest eleven, and then letting the game degenerate with mass substitutions. What I'd love to see is untried players getting their chance alongside established players. That means selecting nine or ten of the strongest team alongside one or two new faces. That way you see how they do in a proper games as opposed to getting twenty minutes of what Americans call "garbage time".

Roll on August 16th...