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Originally Posted by Lex I agree that he has done a good job... When he took over the England job EVERYBODY was saying that we should forget Japan/Korea (because the team was in such a poor state) and concentrate on Portugal, the fact he got us to Japan was beyond expectation, and he also gave us the pleasure of beating Germany and Argentina along the way.
He then did exaclty as expected and got us qualified comfortably for Portugal. Admittedly we could have done better there, but losing in the knock out stages on Penalties is not a huge disgrace is it?
Next he qualified us for Germany 2006... what exactly has he done that is so awful? |
Could it be that England played awful football, and really only defeated teams that we
should beat, so, so what? Even then under Ericsson, not exactly in style, and even in the 2002 qualifiers he managed to mis-manage to the point that even after drubbing Germany, we still had to rely on a free kick that shouldn't have been given to qualify at all! Then off to the Far East, a fairly easy set of qualifiers, a reasonable 1st knock out game, then despite the warnings that he was carrying too many losers (Heskey ring any bells?) he displayed the tactical ineptitude he was to become famous for, in the one hard game he faced, and promptly saw his team get played off the park. Great.
He then failed to ever use friendlies to good effect, got to the S/F at a EURO 2004 so weak that Greece won it, and again displayed poor judgement when it counted, ie in losing to an average Portugal. Cue the press trying to get rid of him............
Then on to the less than convincing performances in this World cup qualifying series, in a group so poor that the likes of Ramsey, Revie, Robson and Hoddle would have been green with envy, and which included a dismal defeat at "how many years was it since you won?" NI and you can see why people are a little sceptical at his 'great record'.
As has been said before, England haven't progressed one millimetre under Ericsson - with a reasonable group of players.
If we win the World cup then I'm prepared to forgive just about anything, but frankly, I will getting out the worry beads early on this time..............