Surprise surprise.
Well, I'm not.
For me, Sven has been a disaster from start to finsih. We all know we have the players that could have gone a lot further in the world cup, and the European championships 2 years ago.
And the moment I saw Sven's squad for the world cup I just knew we'd get about as far as we did. As soon as we came up against some reasonable opposition if stuck with his traditional line up we'd struggle. Well, it was worse than his original line up as Owen went home, one of the players who could be a match winner.
I thought Swedes were supposed to be methodical, logical people. I can't understand the logic of when you have the chance to pick 5 forwards, you don't, you pick 4, 2 of which were very serious injury doubts, 1 who had never kicked a football in anger at Premiership level and 1 lanky so-and-so who shows good touches at times but is not a world-cup player against decent opposition.
Bearing in mind the risk of picking both Owen and Rooney, how could he not pick the highest English goalscorer in the premiership, Darren Bent, or still one of the best prospects in English football who has experience, Defoe? Beyond me I'm afraid.
Given all of that, the line-ups he did pick were pretty predictable. There were some positives, yes. Owen Hargreaves did well and so did Lennon when he was sparingly used.
But he didn't change things when he should have done. Lampard was obviously struggling big time. Why on earth did he keep Lampard on the pitch for every minute of every game? The guy couldn't hit the proverbial barn door. For goodness sake Sven, the Portugal game was crying out for him to come off and Lennon put on a lot earlier. And it was also obvious Rooney was getting more and more frustrated. A timebomb waiting to go off. That's when a manager worth his salt earns his money. We should have played 2 up front, he should have replaced Lampard. The only reason Lennon came on against Portugal was because Beckham got injured.
And how, in the heat of battle, the guy can just sit on that bench and do, demonstrate and vociferrate diddly is beyond me. He doesn't have the Scolari personality, we all know that. But for goodness sake how can he just sit there, with a couple of arm gestures, when we in the mire out there.
Hindsight is wonderful I know, but couldn't anyone else really see this coming deep down?
What worries me even more is we now have Steve "Mr Personality" McLaren taking over. We probably shouldn't pre-judge, but I'm certainly not filled with any confidence.
Check his stats' if you don't believe me.
Lamps sure did have enough chances to slot one or two goals away, much of his stuff was on target but failed to be decent enough to beat the opposing goalie. I reckon part of the problem was the inbalance of the team, goodness only knows wht so many midfield players were selected, Jeanus(sp) for one.
