By Pedro Llave
August 18 2005

Since last night, a lot of the general complaints/niggles about Sven have led to some members of the press calling for a replacement. Obviously, after the worst England defeat in my life-time it is quite tempting to jump on the bandwagon, but I wanted to take a slightly more objective view point. I have a few questions:

1. What does Sven actually do differently from say, Keegan or Venables, to deserve his £4million salary?

If anyone knows, please let me know.

2. Has Sven gone the way of all England Managers (in that he has his favourites)?

When he joined it was v.refreshing to see him pick players on merit rather than just how many caps they had/whether he liked them or not.

In the beginning he knew nobody and all players were equal.

Now, I feel that he has his favourites:
e.g. Scholes (b4 retirement), Beckham, Owen, Ferdinand, Lamps, Ar*e Sol, Seamen (b4 retirement) and James (despite all his calamities Sven still seems to want to give him a chance to displace Robbo).

3. Has he run out of ideas?

In qualifying for WC in 02 he made some key changes:

i) He got rid of the jingoistic, tub-thumping school of thought that dictated that all that was needed to win a game of football was pride in the shirt and a few hard tackles on Johnny Foreigner who 'didn't like it up 'em'.

ii) He stopped playing players out of position.

iii) He got us playing to our strengths - fast build up and speedy counter-attack supported by a miserly defence.

This approach worked well against sides that came at us, but was not so good at breaking teams down. In the WC, against 10man Brazil it was clear that changes needed to be made and that certain favourite players were not 100% fit.

Sven did absolutely nothing to swing the game in our favour - making a mockery of El Tel's famous phrase that 'a manager makes his money at half-time'. Judging from Sven's record of poor 2nd half performances that comment is doubly ironic.

Sven did dabble in the 4-3-3 formation, but has now seemed to have got himself involved in the typically English tactical straight-jacket that is 4-4-2.
The problem is that we don't seem to have the personnel to play that formation, or perhaps we do, but we'll never know as Sven just won't pick those players (the only two out-and-out English wingers at the moment, SWP and Stewart Downing).

I fear this is because it would mean sacrificing at least one of his 3 World Class midfielders and possibly even his captain.

Unthinkable.

Sven's only current tactic seems to be 'give to Rooney' (Euro 04 was proof of that), which is I suppose a slight improvement on his previous favourite tactic of 'boot it over the top for Michael'.

Just for the record, Keegan played a narrow 4-4-2 and was slaughtered as tactically inept. Taylor played the long ball and was denounced as an idiotic Swede (so is the circle is complete?)

4.What would happen if we got rid of him?

Complete disruption of the side?
Possibly, but this is an international team of individuals from numerous different squads, it wouldn't upset them day to day (imo at least).

We would need a long settling in period for the new manager to settle on his best team/tactics.

Why? Any person with a reasonable knowledge of English football knows who the best players are, and that there are only really 2 and a half possible formations we could play (4-4-2 or 4-3-3/4-5-1).

We might not qualify for the WC.

What? From a group including as second seeds the mighty Poland and opposition from the footballing super-powers that are Austria and Poland - ranked 71st and 80th in the world rankings respectively?

Conclusion
What we need is for the manager to get those 'World Class' English players, of which we have a few, to play as a team and bust a gut for the country and each other.

It's a well known footballing phenomena that a new manager almost always brings about an upsurge in form as the players feel the pressure to prove themselves all over again.

At this current moment in time, I feel as if I'm as close to an England start as either of Stewart Downing or Shaun Wright-Philips,and that repeated failures and below-par performances from the likes of Rio, Lamps and Becks will be forgiven ad infinitum.

Under Sven we will qualify for the World Cup, but unless he can start to get the best out of our underperforming stars it's just going to be the same old story.