McClaren......

[thesilverfoxlfc]

[tomasjj]

I think the initiative was handed to England through the stupid, stupid penalty.

Sitting back against a team like Croatia was going to mean trouble. They're too skilled not to find a way through at least once or twice for chances. England needed to try and maintain the momentum in an effort to get the third.

Sitting back is what we Irish do...against teams like Macedonia and Malta..much to our credit.

Yeah, I see your point.

However I was not advocating a last line of battle just outside the box. More a balanced team who could keep the ball a bit better and not just bomb on forward all the time. Sort of keep it and wait for an opening, then attack.

[dww]

To be fair mate, the midfield could have had any formation you liked the defence gave the opposition so much space they could do what they liked, all three goals came from poor marking. In addition hardly any of the players did the basics well, decent passing for example was non existant for most of the game.

The quality of a manager should fairly be over a run of games and as a result McLaren failed (considering Sven has a very similar team), but yesterday the players didnt need to be told what to do, they knew they had glory in their own hands and pretty much given to them on a plate after Israel's result. They failed yesterday.

Slaven Bilic was right yesterday when he said it wasnt the formation, pitch or manager's fault, it was just that Croatia are a better team.

I agree that Croatia are a better team but part of that is down to having a well established formation and pattern of play which is what England under McClaren have sorely lacked. It is the players fault in a way but I got the impression that the side expected to just have to turn up to get a result and it is absolutely the managers responcibility to stop that. In my opinion with his selection and tactics as well as his general talk around the game he didn't respect Croatia enough.

I can see what you are saying about the defence, but if you select an inexperienced back line which hasn't played together regularly the obvious thing to do (for me at least) would be to start the game with a strong midfield shield and let them play themselves into the game. We didn't do that at all. I thought that we lacked leaders on the pitch, particularly the defensive areas and given that he drove Carra out of the international scene at least part of that is down to the policies of McClaren as well as his selection on the night.

[saveferris]

Isn't it the manager's job to get them to play as a team?

I think it's hard to argue with the notion that England's players aren't all that good and the manager failed woefully to get the best out of them.

Part of McLaren's job is to get then to work as a team, in that he chooses the tactics and the players.

But if the players who as indivduals are decent players cant do the basics alongside each other then this cant be down to the manager. As the manager of the national team he should be safe to assume the players can do these simple things.

[Neil Young]

Part of McLaren's job is to get then to work as a team, in that he chooses the tactics and the players.

But if the players who as indivduals are decent players cant do the basics alongside each other then this cant be down to the manager. As the manager of the national team he should be safe to assume the players can do these simple things.

Hmm, sure, I see what you're saying but it's not like they can't play better than they did last night. The blame for at least some of that "gap" between ability and performance must be laid at McClown's door.