Come anticipate Roy Hodgson's three months in charge og England with me.

Goalkeepers: Ben Foster, Joe Hart, John Ruddy
Defenders: Leighton Baines, Gary Cahill, Ashley Cole, Phil Jagielka, Glen Johnson, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Kyle Walker
Midfielders: Michael Carrick, Tom Cleverley, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Jack Wilshere, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Theo Walcott, Ashley Young, Wilfried Zaha
Strikers: Jermain Defoe, Rickie Lambert, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck

scenario: you are a prem team with this squad. you get a massive bag of cash dropped on your doorstep by an oil gangster. before clicking on the transfers tab, at what positions, if any, do you think 'we're okay there'?

Goalkeepers: Joe Hart
Defenders: Leighton Baines, Gary Cahill, Ashley Cole, Glen Johnson
Midfielders: Michael Carrick, Steven Gerrard, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott
Strikers: Wayne Rooney

= lb

Doing alright for deep-lying playmakers I suppose.

I mean not if you had money to drop on Pirlo or Modric or someone but still...

well spotted woy, if chelsea bid for ruddy then he must obviously be better than fraser forster

Happy with the fullbacks; attacking midfield okay, but realistically of course you're going to buy the world's finest; Rooney; you'd probably keep Hart.

Ruddy; Jones, Smalling, Jagielka, Walker; Milner, Ox, Young, Zaha; Lambert, Welbeck

This team stays up imo.

Jesus fuck we need a striker. And some new centre backs. Is Ashley young really still an automatic selection for an England squad?

Man Utd's Ashley Young?

Zaha in there is a bit of a joke as well.

been tearing it up in pre-season tbf (one of the few)

Ruddy; Jones, Smalling, Jagielka, Walker; Milner, Ox, Young, Zaha; Lambert, Welbeck

This team stays up imo

Not without a midfield that can protect that pissweak back four it doesn't.

well spotted woy, if chelsea bid for ruddy then he must obviously be better than fraser forster

To be fair to big Fraser he's been fucking pish since people started rating him.

Where's Scotty Parker in that squad, is he injured?

Combination of age and form I'd guess.

Steven Gerrard is 33.

"the ageless steven gerrard"

2 results (0.09 seconds)

disappointing

"mercurial steven gerrard"

About 201 results (0.23 seconds)

No results found for "spritely steven gerrard"

"ageing steven gerrard"
About 22,000 results (0.24 seconds)

"past it steven gerrard"
About 699 results

No results found for "passed it steven gerrard".

ha

RICKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

England u21 just went 6-0 up against Scotland u21. The future's bright.

hm

Lambert scores with his first touch more or less

When Roy Hodgson was asked this week which player he would most like to pinch from a rival team at the coming World Cup finals, the England manager gave his questioner, Garry Richardson of Radio 5 Live, an answer that was both amusing and diplomatic. He would take Mario Balotelli from Italy for the opening Group D fixture, he said, followed by Luis Suárez from Uruguay, and then, for the final group match, "whoever is Costa Rica's best player – I haven't quite done my research on that yet".

god i am going to be the biggest CR partisan that day

hes probably the least provincial england manager since robson so i assume that is because he wants to give an honest answer rather than saying whichever of oviedo or ruiz came to mind first

sturridge rooney
lallana
sterling milner
gerrard

whoops, didn't mean to submit that.

I was gonna say is that supposed to be a functioning front six?

lallana in the pfa player of the year nominations ahead of david silva

raheem sterling in michael owen's team of the year ahead of david silva, lallana on the rw with gerrard/yaya CM

the emergence of some actual fitba players means england could probably field a team that wouldn't look like an england team, but hodgson will probably play a mixture of fitba players and vermin like carroll, townsend, milner etc

if they had a manager whose morés derived from somewhere past the 1980s (as much as i like hodgson personally, he is an old 66 year old compared to wenger, lucescu, del bosque, van gaal and other surviving contemporaries) then things could be different

they would probably be best served recognizing that twp without speed is not really worth building a team around and playing a proper 4-3-3 with a midfield of gerrard wilshere and carrick or henderson, sturridge as first choice #9, then either play twp or welbeck as inside left and sterling or chamberlain as a right winger

with twp as support striker or '#10' as he is sometimes risibly categorized, england have so little useful possession that they can barely even play a counterattacking game let alone an expansive one, it will just be two deep midfielders desperately trying to clear the lines every time they regain the ball

tenacious, aggressive high energy midfield with good long passing ability and at least one runner (maybe barkley if wilshere can't play) to break the lines and plenty of speed in attack is probably the best combination they have

not sure i believe in wilshere any more

TWP - Studge - Sterling
Henderson
Carrick - Gerrard
Baines - Cahill - Fuck Knows - Johnson
Hart I suppose

Assuming Wilshere isn't going to make it but that actually wouldn't be bad. Although even the good England players will get sucked down into the general torpor when the actual tournament comes round.

(Xpost - hah)

the backlash against him is a bit over the top

he wouldn't get near the midfield of the best teams but as england's only midfielder with close control and dribbling ability, he has to play if he is fit

I'm assuming that Wilshere isn't going to be fit. He should go if he is.

he will be fit but probably not in form

----Ox---------Studge---------Raheem
--------------Lallana---------------
----------Gerrard--Delph------------
-Baines---Cahill--Jagielka----Johnson
--------------Hart------------------

that midfield would get exposed so badly vs anyone? delph and lallana have never played in europe or done anything outside of midtable epl

Carrick might be suffering from a Moyes-induced malaise but he's been pretty awful this season

how about old gareth barry instead?

any of our experienced midfielders can't run. Carrick/Gerrard axis too slow. Ox badly found out when playing centrally. Wilshere prob won't be in peak condition. Henderson can run but likes to go forward too much for an Eng CM.

counter attack with speed and hope for the best

England aren't getting out of that group whoever they play in CM.

gerrard isn't really slow, he has slowed but that is from being a player whose sprint times were better than michael owen, as a deep lying midfielder he's fine

barry lampard or carrick provide different varieties of slowness from geological time to the merely arthritic but the options are just so limited

delph lallana etc are just nowhere near good enough, even henderson can look very lightweight at times, but he is the only =< 25 y/o midfield runner who has experience of playing in a champions league level team

choice of naivete or immobility