England Manager Steve McClaren Under Fire, Under Pressure and Under Achieving
Steven Gerrard showed his class as his one man act helped England in an insipid win over pub-team Andorra last night in Barcelona. England’s beleaguered fans were calling for Beckham’s return and McClaren’s head on a plate at half time as the score remained goalless, and the thought of a draw against lowly Andorra suddenly looked like a reality for a team ranked 6th in the World. McClaren had rung the changes through the team, but again could not inspire his men to raise their game to a level slightly above terrible. At the post match interview moody McClaren answered just two questions before announcing in a crackling voice “Gentlemen, if you want to write whatever you want to write, you can write it because that is all I am going to say. Thank you.”
England 3 Andorra 0
Before the game Frank Lampard was declared fit to play after his wrist injury, but stayed on the bench, while the team sheet gave the name of the left-back as Assley Cole – to which Cole lived up to by playing like a donkey throughout the game. On the pitch Steven Gerrard, wearing the Adidas Predator Absolute football boots, scored twice and new boy David Nugent, who was wearing the Umbro X Boot II, grabbed the last goal. We did notice Owen Hargreaves has yet to wear the Nike football boots since he has signed with them, as he has continued to wear the Adidas Predator Absolute since we reported the story (Read the story here).
Our Verdict:
When a team of world class players fails to perform, then the manager must stand tall and be a man, not crack at the first sign of criticism and flounce away in a red-faced huff. The fact remains the manager is judged by the performance of his players on the pitch – if they don’t perform well it is down to him – maybe the step up to international management was too big an ask for the ex-Middlesbrough boss, who is clearly having difficulty extracting world class performances from his team of highly paid donuts. As the fans quite eloquently sang at the end “We want McClaren out.” Ditto.
