Author Archives: Mike

Quick Slovenia preview

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Slovenia are no mugs internationally speaking: since independence from the old Yugoslavia in 1991, they reached both Euro 2000 and the 2002 World Cup and they are currently ranked 57th in the world and 31st in Europe (which puts them ahead of Wales!) and they lie third in World Cup qualifying group three, two points behind Northern Ireland with three games left to play.

With a population of just over 2 million – about the size of Greater Manchester – it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that nearly all of the squad play outside Slovenia. Their best known player is Robert Koren of West Brom, who also holds the record for the most international appearances. The potential goal scoring threat is Milivoje Novakovic of FC Koln who is a big unit and will test our defenders; on that subject, Gary Cahill of Bolton has been called up to provide cover for Wes Brown and John Terry – it’ll be interesting to see if he gets any playing time today.

Coverage on ITV starts at 4:45pm GMT and we’ll have the result when it comes in; over the next couple of days we’ll have a round up of the rest of today’s qualifiers.

Squad Announced For Slovenia/Croatia game

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The England squad for the friendly at the weekend against Slovenia and the penultimate home qualifier versus Croatia was announced on Sunday night. The starting eleven will probably look similar to the one that drew with Holland at the start of August with Wes Brown replacing the injured Rio Ferdinand (thigh strain).  Aaron Lennon and Peter Crouch (now both of Spurs after the latter moved from Portsmouth) were the only notable additions while neither Theo Walcott and – perhaps less surprisingly -  Michael Owen were called up. Walcott’s absence means that Arsenal do not have a single player in the current England squad: Joleon Lescott’s rather acrimonious transfer from Everton to Manchester City means that City now have four players involved for the forthcoming games.

Apart from Rio there are no significant injury worries: the same can’t be said for the Croats, who lost Spurs’ Luka Modric for at least six weeks when he broke his leg at the weekend. It’s hard not to have mixed feeling about this: on the one hand Modric’s absense might make our task easier but on the other his undoubted ability might have made the game more exciting and unpredictable.

The current lead in Group 6 might well be cut to four points on Saturday as Croatia have a qualifier on Saturday against Belarus in Zagreb (7:30 GMT, apparently no plans to show it on TV); earlier that afternoon Andorra travel to Ukraine. More to come about those games and the rest weekend’s qualifiers later this week.

In terms of the squad’s performance in Premiership form so far, the situation is very encouraging. Fourteen of the 24 players called up by Fabio Cappello come from the current top four clubs at the time of writing and there have been 18 goals throughout the squad, with Jermain Defoe and Wayne Rooney having scored four each. Surprisingly, defenders currently lead the midfielders by four goals to three, largely due to Glen Johnson’s pair of goals for Liverpool.

11 of the 14 Premiership assists from the England squad have come from the midfield with Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Aaron Lennon contributing two each.

Discipline has been reasonably good so far, although both Wayne Rooney
and Ashley Young have both picked up two yellow cards in the Prem this season. However, top of the naughty list is a Mr David Robert Joseph
Beckham of LA Galaxy, who received a straight red card v Seattle on 16th August but scored the winner against Chivas at the weekend: coming so soon after the well reported incidents with the Galaxy fans, this might be a situation that needs to be monitored.

Full squad:

Goalkeepers: Foster (Manchester United), Green (West Ham), Robinson (Blackburn)

Defenders: Johnson (Liverpool), Brown (Manchester United), Upson (West Ham), Terry (Chelsea, capt), Lescott (Manchester City), A Cole (Chelsea), Bridge (Manchester City)

Midfielders: Wright-Phillips (Manchester City), Lennon (Spurs), Beckham (Los Angeles Galaxy), Barry (Manchester City), Lampard (Chelsea), Carrick (Manchester United), Gerrard (Liverpool), A Young (Aston Villa), Milner (Aston Villa)

Strikers:Rooney (Manchester United), Heskey (Aston Villa), Defoe (Spurs), C Cole (West Ham), Crouch (Spurs).

Netherlands 2, England 2

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A come from behind…well…draw tonight, I’d say it was the right result despite going in at half time 2-0 down thanks to some decidedly summer holiday kickabout defending by Messers Barry and Ferdinand.  Jermain Defoe scored both our goals and James Milner and Carlton Cole were also impressive.

England playing tonight even though the Prem hasn’t started yet…

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The debate whether we have to play a friendly so early in the season is a bit of a non-starter as FIFA decide on these dates, but at least it’s not a qualifier and the Dutch are almost in the same boat as us (the Eredivisie is two games old) – but the big difference is that they have already qualified for the World Cup and we haven’t. We’ll try to get a report up tomorrow, but as it’s a friendly there’s no live stuff planned for this evening; we’ll post the result as soon as we have it.

As something a bit different in the build up to South Africa, we’re going to follow the two dozen or so players who we think might make the final squad for next summer. An interesting fact is that the only player we’re following who doesn’t currently playing in the Premiership is David Beckham (who has been making some headlines of his own recently) – in fact, according to the font of all knowledge that is Wikipedia, there are more members of the current North Korean squad who play in Europe than there are in the England squad.

Basically what we’re going to do is this. Even though the Premiership has yet to start, there are a lot of games this weekend that should feature players from the squad that face the Dutch tonight – barring any injuries of course.

Top of the list are Man U v Birmingham (Sunday 1:30 Sky Sports) and Blackburn v Man City with four England squad members on show, followed by Chelsea v Hull (Saturday 12:45 Sky), Spurs v Liverpool (Sunday 4pm Sky), Aston Villa v Wigan and Wolves v West Ham (all with three England players). Everton v Arsenal (Saturday 5:15 ESPN)features Theo Walcott and Joleon Lescott and last of all (if he plays) David Beckham will be playing for LA Galaxy v Seattle Sounders sometime on Sunday morning when we’re all tucked up in bed.

At the beginning of the following week, we’ll post one liners about the performances from the previous weekends that will outline goals, assists, injuries etc. and hopefully we’ll gradually get a clearer idea of who will make the final squad if/when we qualify.

Sir Bobby Robson 1933-2009

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The first Saturday of August in England and it’s raining; football weather. Normally this would be time to look forward to the new season but when the news broke yesterday that Sir Bobby Robson had passed away it was time to stop and reflect on what an outstanding career he had as a player, coach and manager not only in and for England but also abroad with some of the heavyweights of European club football; he always came across as being a good bloke and one of the last ‘old school’ football personalities too, something that came across yesterday in the many tributes that were paid to him. Perhaps fittingly, his last appearance at a football match was a few days before his death when he attended a friendly between the England 1990 and Germany 1990 sides for the Sir Bobby Robson Trophy (England 1990 won 3-2);  the image of Sir Bobby consoling Paul Gascoigne will always remain in the memories of England fans that are old enough to remember the events of the dramatic evening 4th July 1990.

Andorra Preview

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Well Saturday couldn’t have gone any better, could it! A four goal win away from home, six wins out of six, our nearest rivals drawing and a seven point lead going into a home game against the bottom team in the group.

Not the time to get complacent though, even though the facts are overwhelming: Andorra have only ever picked up a point away from home in the World Cup qualifiers (against Macedonia in 2005) and have never won an away game. They scored against Belarus on Saturday, defender Ildefons Lima notched in the last minute but by that time the Belarussians had scored five. Lima – Andorra’s all time leading scorer – plays for AS Triestina in Italy’s Serie B whereas the rest of the Andorran squad play for minor Spanish clubs or in the eight team Andorran league.

On the other hand, we ‘ve only lost two home World Cup qualifiers since 1997 (Italy and Germany) and haven’t been beaten at home since Croatia knocked us out of Euro 2008. Not much to report on the England team today, although it’s worth keeping an eye on whether Theo Walcott will play or not seeing as though he’s supposed to be playing for the under 21s later this week (and apparently if Arsene Wenger had his way he wouldn’t even be playing for them) and that Beckham, Johnson and Heskey would all miss the Croatia game if they were booked tomorrow night.

We’re going to try something a bit different tomorrow night: a commentary on twitter – if you want to follow it follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/11lions . Can’t guarantee what time coverage will start and as I’ll be watching the British Lions latest tour game, I’ve got a ‘Big Brother’ issue with my other half and if England score an early goal it might turn into a discussion about ITVs coverage

Couple of non-football notes to finish on: there’s a tube strike on London Underground tomorrow and having been up to Wembley three times since it reopened I can only begin to imagine how much chaos that might cause. There have been various reports this evening that Setanta is facing administration – which raises the question of which channel might carry England away games if/when Sentanta goes down the tubes…sorry, couldn’t resist that one.

Enjoy the game!

Kazakhstan Preview

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Despite an injury list that would be extremely worrying if the situation was repeated in South Africa next year, we’re going into the next two qualifiers in an extremely favourable position to ensure automatic qualification. We should beat Kazakhstan on Saturday (4:00pm on Setanta, highlights 10:00pm on ITV) and Andorra on Wednesday (7:45pm on ITV), but arguably the most important game in the group is the one between Croatia and the Ukraine, which kicks off at 7:15pm on Saturday: it’s pretty safe to say that if Ukraine lose, they’re unlikely to get to South Africa next summer, leaving the Croats as the only obstacle to overcome.

 

So what do we know about the Kazahk team? Their home record in the World Cup is pretty poor – apart from a 3-0 win over Andorra last August they’ve lost every single one of their other home qualifiers, most recently a 5-1 defeat by Belarus in April. They’re currently ranked 137th in the world and 47th(out of 53) in Europe – just worse than Luxembourg – so they’re the second weakest team in our group after Andorra, despite being the ninth largest country in the world. The game is being held in Almaty (which isn’t the capital city but is the largest city in the country), which apparently means ‘full of apples’. The players to watch out for in a squad without a great deal of international experience are striker Sergei Ostapenko (4 goals in 19 appearances) and midfielder Ruslan Baltiev, who is the most capped player in the squad (70). Unusually these days, none of the Kazakh squad play their club football outside the country, although some of them have played abroad (normally in Russia) in the past.

 

The starting England eleven for tomorrow’s game hasn’t been announced at the time of writing, but the main issues are who will be in goal and the composition of the back four. I’d be tempted to give the gloves to Robert Green, who deserves another chance to show what he can do as the other options are Scott Carson (who will be playing in the Championship with West Brom next season) and Paul Robinson. After Rio Ferdinand dropped out, Fabio Capello brought Gary Cahill of Bolton Wanderers in as a replacement central defender, but if Green does start in goal then I think it makes sense for Matt Upson of West Ham to partner John Terry in central defence instead of Joleon Lescott.

 

Currently England are 1/6 favourites to win, with a 2-0 win around 5/1 and Wayne Rooney to score first at about 10/3. I think the two goal margin is a fair one, but having scored in their last twelve consecutive home games I’d be surprised if Kazakhstan don’t score.

Happy St George’s Day

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Today is St George’s Day and most of us will still be going to work. As you may know, countries all over the world celebrate their patron saint, for example and the closest to us and probably the most well known, is Saint Patrick’s Day for Ireland!

Here is an interesting quote from Wikipedia on the subject:

“Due to supreme shortshightedness and a virtually complete lack of pride in one’s own country, St George’s Day is not celebrated as much in England as other National Days are around the world; the English populace plods off to work as usual and pays scant attention to the day.”

Well, we know there is pride – loads of it – but it isn’t backed up by any determination to do anything by the forces that be, up there in their ivory towers, to make St George a public holiday..dammit! (woo.. steady we’re breaking our non policitical policy – Ed)

St George’s Day is celebrated by the several nations, kingdoms, countries, and cities of which Saint George is the patron saint, including England, the old kingdoms and counties of the Crown of Aragon in Spain — Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia; Portugal, Cyprus, Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Macedonia, and the cities of Moscow in Russia, Genova in Italy, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Beirut in Lebanon, Qormi and Victoria in Malta and many others.

Visit this website on details of how you can take action 😉 http://www.stgeorgesday.com

Anyhoo – Have a GREAT day! 🙂

England 2, Ukraine 1: as it happened.

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As the title says, ‘as it happened’ rather than live so this post is more of a re-cap of last night. We’re going to try to live blog some of the games leading up to the World Cup Finals, but as an exercise in live blogging it really was worthwhile.

Due to a Sky Box issue with my nearest and dearest, I watched the game on delay via ITV.com but I’d advise anyone trying that to make sure that you leave plenty of time at the start of the game because I missed about 30 seconds while watching an IBM ad.

So here’s the almost live version of last night’s events. I’ve been through the comments and spellchecked them: my football shorthand is as follows:

CRN: Corner
D: The…errrr…D on the edge of the penalty box.
ENG/ENGL: England
FK: Free kick
GLK or GK: Goalkeeper
HHH: aka Paul Michael Levesque, professional wrestler from WWE (see below)
HT: half time
INT: intercepted
IT: injury time
L: left
LHS: left hand side
M2M: Marked man to man
MIA: Missing in action
MOM: Man of the match
SWP: Shaun Wright-Phillips
UKR: Ukraine
R: Right
WP: Well played
WWE: World Wrestling Entertainment

5m: not much in it right now. Both sides still checking each other out.

6:58 Rooney just wide with an overhead kick, nice effort.

9:54 Barry gets a yellow, literally seconds after I thought he should be careful.

10:17 Valiyaiev shoots wide left. England beginning to slowly get on top.

12:00 Nice cross from Aaron Lennon. England definitely on top right now.

13:28 Rooney brought dwn by Mykhalyk, who gets a card. FK to the left of the D. Gerrard misses just to the left. Good effort.

15:25 Rooney near splits the UKR defence, Gerrard only GLK to beat, but pass INT.

19:43 England corner, Lampard (R), UKR have it under control until poor play by Tymoschuk gives it away: ball played into area but Rooney is offside.

Tight game, interesting as both teams are being patient. This looks like a typical England first round finals game.

22:25 Nice break by UKR but cross is overhit and James takes it.

24:05 Lampard CRN R, UKR break from it. UKR maybe a little over elaborate when attacking.

25:07 Goalmouth scramble, decent chance for England but nothing comes of it

25:37 UKR attack and Voronin – who looks like HHH from WWE – is injured, but not really Terry’s fault. James a little bit MIA there.

28:15 Nice header from Rooney, corner ENG (L), Crouch GOAL ENGLAND. Oh no it’s the Robot. Knock down from John Terry.

31:08 Aliev FK, James gathers. Slow mo shows that Barry was holding Milevskiy…poss pen. Barry needs to be vigilant. Who’s on the bench?

(Should Clive Tyldesley be talking over the national anthem when the England supporters are singing it?)

35:05 Gorgeous diagonal ball (l to r) from Rooney to Lennon,
Lennon centres and Rooney blazes over. Crouch got the goal, but Rooney is 1st half MOM.

36:30 James muffs a long range shot from Tymoshuck, luckily no UKR in the immediate area.

37:45 James clears the ball out for a UKR throw in.

39:32 UKR FK, blocked, Tymoschuk blasts over the bar.

41:00 Gerrard gives the ball away, but danger is averted. Obviously still some nerves, but England look relatviely comfortable.

43:17 Snapshot from Gerrard after some nice approach work, Rooney in the middle of it again.

44;00 David Pleat notices Rooney is M2M by Slysur

44:57 England corner (R), 1m IT, Crouch header cleared off line by Yarmash.

HT England 1-0 Ukraine. About right.

45:00 and we’re off.

46:30 Rooney starts getting a bit physical. Shevchenko warming up, but so what. Far too early for a sub.

47:45 Cole gives the ball away. Too much of this. Rooney snapshot, nice try. At the moment it’s wormkanlike ten plus Rooney.

49:28 Voronin offside from Timoshuk ball.

50:10 England nice approach work but nothing comes of it. Ooh look, it’s David Beckham.

(New shirt is growing on me despite initial verdict that it looks like a netball shirt from the 70s.)

(UKR not a bad team, we’re better, if they had a Rooney it might be different.)

(Pizza’s here but I’ll keep going)

54:29 Voronin off, Shevchenko on. Perhaps Mikhailichenko read my comment about Ukraine needing a Rooney.

57:09 Lennon for Sir David Beckham OBE, UKR goalie Pyatov injured by Mykhalyk rather than Lurch…sorry, Crouch.

(Beckham’s knighthood will be in King Charles’ accession honours list)

60:30 Nazarenko on for Valiyaev

61:40 FK ENG, RH D, Here’s Beckham…close, but no cigar.

63:45 Slysur s/be booked for foul on Barry

64:25 Rooney needs to calm down after going through Olexander Aliev.

(Why are the no updates from the other games featuring British teams?)

(Poland have beaten San Marino 10-0)

72:00 Glen Johnson booked. Not much going on.

73:35 GOAL UKR SCHEVCHENKO, FK from right bounces
around in the area, not properly dealt with, Shevchenko wellied it, James no chance. 1-1.

76:00 ENG crn L (Beckham), nothing comes of it.

Just had a text from another ENGL fan:

‘We looked lazy 15 mins before that goal’

78:15 SWP about to come on for Crouch.

79m Thanks for the updates Clive, bit late aren’t they.
Go to xscores.com for all your latest scores.

80:45 Here’s the curse: THIS IS GOING TO BE A DRAW.

82:30 FK ENG, Beckham L, nothing…

(Why was Beckham bought on? Where’s Gerrard been in terms of attacking?)

84:35 FK ENG GOAL ENGLAND, Beckham FK into LHS box,
Gerrard knock down to Terry who scooped it in. Well there’s my answer! And the curse has been broken again.

86:40 Beckham earns silly yellow card

87m Jagielka for Ferdinand, UKR also make a sub but ITV don’t tell us who it is (Kalinichenko for Slysur)

(N Ireland have won, R Ireland drew with a late Robbie Keane goal and Wales have done what Wales normally do. Scotland are about to win.)

89:33 John Terry announced MOM. Probably right, although if Rooney had stayed in the game he would have won it.

(Where’s the Injury Time clock ITV?)

(Scotland have beaten Iceland.)

91:00 Snapshot from Lampard. Argentina are losing 4-1 to Bolivia, WP Diego.

And that’s it for tonight, England probably shaded it but Capello needs to tell them that they’ve got to be a bit better than that.

So what did we learn yesterday? A draw would have been a disappointing result as England were the better team but at times the team seemed to revolve around Wayne Rooney and when he was marked out of the game the lack of creativity was noticeable. In order to introduce some flair and imagination, Capello replaced Lennon with Beckham but that didn’t work as well as it could have and there were a few occasions where the first touch was lacking or the ball was given away.

Having said that, a win is a win, we’re five points ahead of Croatia and Fabio Capello is a better manager than Diego Maradona and Sven Goran Eriksson…who was sacked by Mexico today.

England 4 Slovakia 0 England Strikers -3

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It was a comfortable win in the end England beat Slovakia 4-0 last night in a friendly that was tainted by an injury fest as 3 strikers limped off with various problems leaving Rooney as the only fit striker.

Emile Heskey, Peter Crouch and Carlton Cole are unlikely for the World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on Wednesday after a series of mishaps left Wayne Rooney as the only fully-fit striker in the squad.

Emile set things up with a goal after 7 minutes, turning in a goal from Stevie Gerrard’s cross but had to leave the field with an Achilles problem. Rooney headed in a Beckham cross after 20 minutes and Frank Lampard hit home on the 82nd minute. The win was sealed in the 90th when Rooney finished with a neat flighted close ranger from Lampard’s excellent low-swung cross from the left.

Capello is now looking at calling up Darren Bent to face the Ukraine on Wednesday after a major doubt over Heskey. Capello has ruled out calling up either Michael Owen or Kevin Davies, while Gabriel Agbonlahor pulled out of Friday’s Under-21 international against Norway with a hamstring injury.