England 2 – 0 USA ~ My Thoughts

USA provided no real threat in a game which saw John Terry and Steven Gerrard score for a comfortable win for England.

After getting back from work, I was mildly excited for tonight’s match because of certain situations, I thought Dean Ashton would be getting his long overdue England Debut, I saw exciting prospects such as Tom Huddlestone and Gabriel Abonglahor which I honestly thought would feature tonight. So to my dismay, I switched over to BBC one and saw the line-up Now I want to know if you guys agree, but was it not one of the mistakes Mclaren made that he didn’t experiment enough in friendlies, and then when players were under-performing in qualifiers he didn’t know where to turn. Take the final game, he waited till the final game of qualifying; where we had already been thrown a lifeline, to play Carson in goal.

In this case, why was he playing Beckham, Rio, Gerrard (out of position too) James, Brown.

This is a friendly, my lineup would have been more along the lines of

Hart

Johnson Woodgate Terry Jagielka

Bentley Huddlestone Lampard J.Cole

Ashton Abonglahor

Now maybe not this completely to start, but there are plenty of young faces there who are going to be the ones we turn to come the time of the world cup. Now the only excuse I can think of is that half the champions league squad won’t be going over to Trinidad and therefore the younger guys will get a run out there.

Anyway, the game itself was pretty dull, with moments of flare from England that make me wander why we cant do it for the full 90. James was rarely tested in goal, against a USA side who I thought would give us a real game today, I was disappointed to not see Donnavon playing for USA, who has been scoring for fun in LA. USA have got some premiership players, past and present as well as players who play for other big clubs around Europe. Yet they showed very little in that way of a threat towards the England goal, they didn’t gel and the range of passing was poor.

Therefore, with this in mind you really would have thought the game would be 4-0 odd especially with the fact that most of our so-called “big players” were on the pitch. Defoe, showed his ability to stretch a defence with some super runs, but just couldn’t find the finishing touch; something that I feel will come to him if he gets another chance. England were comfortable in possession, but had little bite and even looked as though the passion wasn’t there with the three stand out players from the first half being Gerrard, Rooney and Defoe. A goal did come from a Beckham cross in which Terry; who was made captain for the game, nodded home quite superbly from 12 yards out. I’m sure being made captain and scoring will help him get over his “slip” last week.

The second half started and still no real experimentation.Gareth Barry; who I still think is no way near international quality came did come on. Anyway, just as I was expressing my opinion on Barry, he went and put a quality ball through to Gerrard who ran wide slightly but calmly sidefooted into the far corner to make it 2-0. England did produce some nice football, with Gerrard, Rooney and Defoe again being the main men for me. Rooney, Ashley Cole, Beckham, Brown (who was awful) and Lampard did all make way, for J.Cole, Barry, Bentley, Johnson and Crouch.

All in all, the game was of a poor quality by anybodies standards, although it did have minor flashes of quality. It was a game that reminded me of the Mclaren era, something that I hope won’t happen again!!! I am looking forward to the Trinidad game with hopes that a younger side will be playing, so we can see the pace, hunger and pride that I feel is currently lacking in a lot of the England squad.

Let me know what you think and if you agree or don’t agree with my opinions.