I'll have an 'H' for honesty please Bob
With Countdown, Lucky Ladders and 15-1 capturing a nation’s imagination for so many years, it’s no wonder everyone is spending so bloody long trying to solve the England puzzle.
Forget Bent ‘Arry and Roy Hodgson. Let’s have William G Stewart in the Wembley dug-out to succeed Fabio. If Tom O’Connor wasn’t a foreigner, he could have done a job as head coach as well.
So many people are hypothesizing and analyzing where it all went wrong in South Africa, from some brainshrinking geopolitical and social factors given in a Simon Kuper book, to Matthew Syed’s (on BBC Breakfast) assertion that there is some ‘explainable unexplainable’ that debilitates every England player.
Jesus wept. Can’t we just say we were shit and have done with it?
It reminds me a fair bit of our great club during those wilderness years, where Paul Franks would earn his monthly Radio WM salary solely from Wolves fans in a single hour after a game.
‘It’s the Molineux Factor Franksy. The fans should get off their backs!’ (Tel from Wall Heath)
‘No it ain’t Tel, it’s all these washed up has-beens on one last big paycheck! Get rid! (Dazza from Stafford)
‘I’m sick of him playing players out of position. Round pegs in round holes please!’ (One of thousands)
It’s all I’ve heard on 5Live for the last two days and it sounds so familiar. Surely every one of us have the answer for those tubby, grubby little men down in Soho Square, having been in the FA’s situation for so many years ourselves.
And seeing as Brian Barwick’s ‘root and branch’ reform of the national game amounted to paying Capello £6 million a year and nothing else, how about they have a blog with us, where we can point them in the direction of Big Mick.
Better still, employ Big Mick, and instill the one virtue that I haven’t seen in an England team since 1998 – the same virtue I bask in every time I skip down Waterloo Road.
Honesty.
Remember the days when we’d shuffle through the turnstiles at 2.50pm, take our medicine and shuffle back from whence we came at the final whistle? When underachievement numbed our expression and diluted our passion? When your weekly natter with the bloke sat next to you was the overriding reason for turning up?
It’s been a bit like that for the past two weeks.
But as these last two years have shown us, success is far from insurmountable, and it’s certainly not mutually exclusive with a Three Lions badge, or a Wolves crest for that matter.
Football isn’t the Krypton Factor or Crosswits, and really can be quite gloriously simple. Simple to watch, simple to play, and simple for us all to evaluate, without the ‘explainable unexplainable.’
If Mick can thrust Darren Potter, Jemal Johnson, Craig Davies, Neill Collins and Gary Breen to within 180 minutes of the Premier League, then I’m damn sure England can do something similar on the world stage, eventually.
So the golden generation is dead? Not at Molineux it isn’t, and the FA could do worse than travel north of Watford Gap and have a look where a bit of honesty can take you.
That’s all fine and well but Mick qualified to 1 major tournament out of 4 with Ireland’s very own ‘Golden Generation’. He’d have been on the mangerial scrapheap before 40 if it had been the England job he was in.
It’s more the principles (and the simplicity that comes with those principles) that we should be looking at IMO Kwolf, and Mick was the perfect example for this blog, being as he’s our gaffer!
Its all got so convuluted and down right complicated on the national stage and it gives me a headache.
I should say Mick was a bloody miracle worker getting Ireland’s ‘golden generation’ to the world cup in 2002, bearing in mind Portugal and Holland were in their group, not to mention a play-off after that!!
And bearing in mind Kilbane, Cunningham, Breen, Kennedy, Connolly and O’Brien were part of that great squad, its no wonder they have never qualified for a major tournament since.
Stick that up your pipe and smoke it!!!
Good morning Benjamino, excellent blog.
The Cowardly Lion would get Ward to change nationality, and play him.
Seriously, MM would weed out the deadwood, and that is all of the current squad, and play youngsters and triers.
The problem would be that results are expected to be instantaneous, and a team of newbies would take time to gel at international level.
But do we want to qualify for a tournament with the current load of dross, only to be let down again?
Perhaps we should look further ahead, to 2018 perhaps, and get a young team going now, much like the Germans have done.
As you say, footie is a simple game, and perhaps the simple soluton is the best.
With no disrespect to Ireland, we have a bigger pool of youth to fish in for up and coming youngsters, who should be hungry and prepared to work as a team, and for the team…i.e. the country.
And as to all the armchair critics and experts, I agree with you Ben, but I will put it blunterer, fuck ‘em, we were shit.
Nice to see Little Real Ronnie doing a Rooney today!!!
FOWB
Morning Clive! You’re right on Ronnie – he was garbage!
If Greece can find a method to win Euro 2004 with a group of distinctly mediocre players, then it can’t be beyond the realms of fantasy that lads like Kieran Gibbs, Joe Hart, Micah Richards, Jack Rodwell, Walcott, Lescott, etc can eventually come in and give us real hope. And isn’t our u-17 team meant to be half decent?!
But like you say, it needs a clear out of deadwood, and those that hang on the coattails of real Premiership talent, as Kowloon rightly states.
So what if they are unproven? So what if they fail a few times? I’d imagine that the mood of the nation would be unrecognisably better than it is now, even if we got stuffed again.
Remember when Mick did his own version of this? We lost 6-0 at home and we were doing the Mexican wave! If fans can see a bit of honesty, then that ‘expectancy’ tag is one that immediately vanishes, as we would all be behind them and singing off the same hymn sheet.
Maybe I’m just being a bit of a dreamer. Maybe fans of the Big 4 clubs and a few others could never buy into these ethics.
PS: By the time Kightly gets fit, he could figure, eh Stourbridge?!
I loved your blog Ben. I remember oh so well the goodtime charlies who blew an eleven point lead while stocking up with bling bracelets that Dave Jones allowed to be sold in the dressing room. A bunch of prima donnas who were ok when winning but no balls and no stomach for a fight. Just like the present England losers!
My concern is that the current malaise has already spread to another generation of ‘talent’. I watched our U17s play the Irish U17s about three months ago and it was scarey.
Our chauffeured, bronzed, highly coiffeured (complete with razor cut patterned eyebrows) and probably diamante encrusted jock straps strutted their stuff against the eleven pasty, frozen chicken white legged, freckly, ginger no-hopers and guess what….? The Irish beat us 1-0.
Same old story at a frighteningly young age from England. Limited ability with egos matched only by the size of their top four contracts. No balls, no guts and no effin good!
Until all levels of players are rewarded by a performance related pay structure I see little hope of things changing.
You’re right about the integrity MM has bought to our playing staff. I’ve rarely felt more proud of the players wearing the old gold and black than I have since Micks been at the helm. And I’m glad the FAs gaze doesnt extend beyond Watford ‘cos I for one would hate to see him leave what I beleive to be the something special he’s building at Wolves.
Wow I never thought I’d see Bob Holness’s mug on this blog. Inexplicably unexplainable!
I agree about England though. And I thought this letter in today’s Daily Torygraph put it nicely too:
“SIR – Best team at the World Cup? They’re not even the best team in England.
Perhaps for future tournaments the manager will pick the best English players and not those who hang on the coat tails of the talented foreigners at the top of the Premier League.
Alan Bennett
Carterton, Oxfordshire”
Interesting blog chaps. Now then didn`t some overpaid bigwig from the FA justify the existence and the whole point of the Premier League, as being a way of improving the performance and results of the England national side.
If only this was the case, and sadly how far off reality is it. I mean the percentage of premier income going out on player salaries, and a great deal of this to johhny foreigners who will never play for Engerland is a joke. What about some new rules such as:-
1) all transfers in cash up front
2) salaries to be no more than 60% or less of a football club/business turnover
3) Proper ownership checks on assets before acquisition of clubs.
This way Portsmouth would not have gone bust, won the FA cup or got out of division seven, and properly run clubs like WWFC would prosper against the clubs with massive debts ie Man Utd, Chelsea etc. A level playing field would benefit the premiership and make it much more of an intersting product to watch and speculate on.
Yes Mark and undoubtedly give home grown talent a chance to blossom.
Pity its the FA who run the FA!!!
Love the letters, FA, coz that’s what they do!
Why don’t we just have one organization to cover all football in this country, I mean England?
In the US, you have Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association.
These three run their respective organizations, and no one else.
They all negotiate with players unions, and have collective bargaining agreements, which are adhered to, for several years at a time.
I completely agree with a salary cap, and performance linked pay.
They have player drafts, for the lesser clubs to pick the cream of the crop, with the hope of getting an even playing field throughout the seasons.
This does not always work, but they have wage caps as well as salary caps, with various exceptions, so you don’t get the same couple of teams winning everything, year after year. Yes, you have the megolomaniac owners, but they cannot buy their way to success anywhere nearly as easily.
Having said that, all three of the above mentioned sports are shit to watch!!!!!
Completely changing the subject, and as we have several weeks before the start of the season, how about a “where are they now” blog?
I was reading a footie book and Peter Knowles pic appeared, and I thought,
“those Jehovah Bastards, whatever happened to him”???
Comments?
FOWB
Last I heard he was working as a porter at (I think) M&S. What a waste of one of the most sublime talents I’ve ever seen. Or were you a Burnside fan???
Yeah, he works in the M&S in Dudley Street
I remember that goal at the cowshed end when he curled it past Gordon West ( of Everton, for all you young ‘uns) from outside the box with the outside of his foot….brilliant.
And talking of Burnside, what a load of crap he was! Must have been English!!!
FOWB
Which goal was that? He scored so many!
My fondest Knocker memory was after tying his hapless marker up in knots for about an hour (Hull at home?) he left him on his arse again and SAT on the ball waiting for the poor bastard to have another go. Priceless!