Now that Steve McClaren has gone, the time has come to reflect on some glorious ineptitude. Yes, I am referring to the players, but the manager has also made some clangers too. Back when we had Sven in charge, I thought he took some unfair stick, and when McClaren took over it seemed like a step backwards. A few highlights of Steve McClaren's reign:1) Dropping David Beckham. Desperate to make his mark, Beckham went from England captain to not in the squad at all. A case of listening to the press, or just poor understanding of the fact that goals tend to come from quality passes? Either way, a catastrophic mistake.
2) Playing Scott Parker in a competitive England match. Let's remember, at this point Beckham still wasn't considered good enough for a place in the squad, so how does Parker get in?
3) Playing Joey Barton. OK, it was only a friendly, but there can be no excuse.
4) Managing to push Jamie Carragher into retirement - a quite amazing achievement, and McClaren was made to pay after injuries to Terry and Ferdinand.
5) Not sorting out his goalkeeping position, culminating in the picking of Scott Carson for last night's vital match. How is Robert Green not even in the latest squads?
So going back to the Sven theme, how does McClaren compare? Well he's worse, far worse. In fact, in terms of losing percentage, he's got the worst record of England managers at 29%. Sven was equal second best in terms of avoiding losses, along with Alf Ramsey, losing 15% of matches. Only Terry Venables record is better in terms of loss percentage.
And Sven's win percentage? 60% - the equal 2nd best win percentage with Ron Greenwood. Top of the list are Alf Ramsey and Glenn Hoddle - believe it or not - on 61%. This compares to McClaren's 50%.
So Steve McClaren may be a nice guy, but unfortunately he's not the man for the job, as proven by his selections and, consequently, his results. I'd love to see Jose Mourinho take the job but I'm not sure how it would go - he thrives on close relationships with his players so how would he cope with only seeing the players occassionally? Unless another top quality alternative emerges, and there are none from the UK, it could just be worth a shot....unless we ask Sven back? :-)
3 comments:
Not for the first time the FA finds itself confronted by a rush of names saying they DON'T want the job. If they end up having to appoint someone they're not 100% certain of (like McClaren), I hope they'll build some sort of safeguard into the contract so that they can fire a failing manager without having to pay a Monopoly-money amount of "compensation": I think it is the obscene amounts of money being paid to failures, whether manager and players, that upset the fans the most.
One of the problems with both Sven and McClaren was their lack of ability to drop "legendary players" such as Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham etc when they were off form. As Mourinho has used the word "untouchables" for some of his Chelsea players (9 i think) Mourinho would fall in to the same trap and remove any ideas of internal competition for places.
Got to say I totally disagree! I agree with the policy of always picking your best players - it could be that game that they come back into form. Only in England do we consider changing the team every game - let's find our best team and stick with it for half a dozen games and see how we go....
Post a Comment