Wednesday, November 17, 2010

England vs France - Capello will awake to unfair headlines

And yet again the fickle England fans jump to accusations of Capello not being up to the job. Twitter has been inundated with the usual remarks all night, so much so that Capello has been trending for a majority of the evening. The newspapers will certainly be taking a similar note. But is it fair?


Sadly I couldn't get tickets for this one so had to watch on ITV like everybody else, and yes it wasn't the prettiest of performances and we did seem outclassed by the only team who flopped harder then us in the World Cup (if you forget Italy's dismal group stages). But I gotta say, did we expect to win? Look at the teams: France have Abidal, Malouda, Benzema and Nasri; we have Walcott, Gerrard, Milner and Carroll. Other then Gerrard we scream unproven - the four I just named from France scream world class. I am not saying we shouldn't expect to beat France, we should - but only if we play a full strength team. Capello wanted to experiment and we all commended him for calling up Henderson, Carroll and Bothroyd - but don't expect them to bring victory on their first appearance. Capello wanted to see what his options were and this helped him have a glimpse at that overview. The score was almost certainly not the most important thing for him today. England fans are too quick to judge these days, I am sure we will now all be asking why Crouch never starts; but do we want him to over Carroll. To me Carroll is an athletic version of Crouch. He has the height, the ability and the skill - tonight was the start of his international career and Capello has said he was impressed. Crouch may have got the goal today. but Capello has never been a fan and tonight he may have found his replacement.

I have no doubt in my mind that Capello will wake up to unfavourable headlines; I also have no doubt they won't bother him in the least. He made his choices for a reason and they were good ones, lets not completely rip him apart just because Benzema decided to actually turn up to this game and we lost to a team who, despite a poor World Cup showing, are always goes to be tough competition.

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