The Worst of England: Football

The World Cup is approaching, and English hopes seem to be at an all-time low. Everyone seems to be writing off their chances, but at least we don’t have the following players in our line up! As with the Best of England series, this is based on all England matches since 1993, when I first started watching football. The team will also be selected based on England performances only. Whatever they achieved or otherwise in their club career is irrelevant here.

Goalkeeper – Ian Walker

The best goalkeepers instil confidence in the defenders in front of them. Ian Walker must have given his back four nightmares. A lack of decisiveness plagued his club career, and it was amazing he was ever given the opportunity to play for England. Yet he played four times, most notably against Italy in a World Cup qualifier, where he let in a very soft goal from Gianfranco Zola, the only goal in a tight game which almost derailed England’s qualification hopes. Scott Carson is very lucky not to be on the list, but whilst he was terrible against Croatia, England were so poor that night they would have lost even if he’d had a blinder.

Right Back – Luke Young

You know the situation is desperate when you are desperate for Gary Neville to return. Young didn’t have any notably bad games, but he was just an incredibly mediocre player who, despite being capped 7 times, made almost no impact on the England side at all. Distinctively average in every aspect of his game.

Left Back – Wayne Bridge

Capped 36 times, yet there is only one game anyone will remember. In the space of 90 minutes against Croatia, any good that Wayne Bridge had achieved in his England career to that point was erased. That performance has since become my barometer for a bad performance, not just for football but in any aspect of life.

Centre Back – Matt Upson

International football is a funny game due to the disparity in quality of the teams on show. A team like Andorra for example would be the whipping boys in League Two for example. Matt Upson managed to look competent for most of his appearances, but very few were against quality players. When he was asked to step up against Germany, his flaws were ruthlessly exposed.

Centre Back – Jamie Carragher

To be honest, terrible England centre backs have been fairly thin on the ground. Therefore I have chosen Carragher for the fact he threw his toys out of the pram and retired early from international football because he wasn’t playing as regularly as he wanted. Yet the players in front of him were all better players, so it is hard to empathise too much with Carragher.

Right Wing – David Bentley

Bentley had a brief purple patch in his club career, but missed out on international selection during this period because of his refusal to play for the England Under 21s on the grounds that he was too tired. When he did finally play, he was booed by the fans and put in performances a long way short of his best.

Left Wing – Dennis Wise

Dennis Wise doesn’t deserve to be on a list of worst England players, but his selection is more due to what he represents. In the late 90s, England struggled terribly to find a decent left winger. Many were tried, including Wise, who was the squarest peg in the roundest of holes. As always, Wise gave it his all, but posed almost no attacking threat in an unfamiliar role.

Central Midfield – Carlton Palmer

If one player summed up Graham Taylor’s reign as England manager, it was Carlton Palmer. In an era where we had the likes of Paul Ince, Paul Gascoigne and David Platt, how Palmer ever played for England is beyond me, yet alone 18 times.

Central Midfield – Tom Cleverley

At least Palmer was effective at breaking up opposition attacks. Okay, he broke up a lot of England’s attacks too, but there were a few positive attributes he added to the team. With Cleverley, I’m struggling to think of a single positive act he has made in an England shirt.

Striker – Michael Ricketts

Just because a player is enjoying a successful season, that doesn’t mean they should play for England. Ricketts was a case in point of that. 12 Premier League goals in 2001-02 saw him called up against the Netherlands, but his limited technique and lack of predatory instinct was all too apparent. Failed to reach double figures for a league season again.

Striker – Kevin Phillips

Ricketts’ failure was expected. Phillips however was, and for most of his career remained, a great finisher also blessed with excellent movement. Yet for some reason, with the Three Lions on his chest the goals simply didn’t come. Chances he would have buried in a league match went begging. A real mystery why he failed to make more of an impression at international level.

Do you agree with my selections? Who would make your team?

What Has Happened To The English Strikers?

England’s World Cup squad was announced this week, and whilst it certainly wasn’t a World Cup winning squad, it was still a squad which excited me. Firstly, Roy Hodgson is the first England manager for a long time to realise that 7 defenders is plenty and having a centre back cover right back opens up another spot for an attacking player who could potentially come off the bench to win a game for us. Secondly, there were the young players. It was refreshing to see an England manager not just going with the tried and tested but giving up and coming players a chance.

I was also excited by what Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling and Luke Shaw represent. Along with the likes of Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, England finally seems to be producing technical accomplished players more regularly. And yet each of these players still plays like an English player. As much as I admire the Spanish way of playing football, if England try to play them at their own game, they will never win. But what England can be the best at is playing in an English style, and if that can be retained whilst improving the technical quality of our players, the future could be promising. There is a long way to go, but it does at least look like English football is on the right track.

The one area of worry going forward though is the striker position. The most recent reliable English Premier League goalscorer to emerge was Wayne Rooney, who is now 28 and has amassed 270 career goals. Daniel Sturridge enjoyed a good season, but previously his best return was 13 goals. Will he just be a one hit wonder?  Sturridge is hardly an emerging talent either – he will be 25 in September. Where are the 18 to 22 year olds achieving 15+ goal seasons?

The dearth of English strikers is something of a surprise given our recent past. I grew up in the 1990s, where at the start of each league season there were at least 10 English players with a realistic chance of scoring 15+ league goals. During the first 10 Premier League seasons, 7 different Englishmen won the Premier League golden boot. Since then, no Englishman has won. This season, just 5 Englishmen reached double figures, and the highest scoring ‘young’ player was Raheem Sterling with 9.

Hopefully this will be a blip and not something symptomatic of a bigger problem. But I worry that in the quest for better all-round players, we could be starting to forget that the most important skill in football, and the most valuable one, is being able to score a goal.

Analysing the BBC Comedy Quota System

When I first read the news about a quota ensuring a minimum of one woman on every BBC comedy panel show, I thought it was a very bad idea. We are now 5 episodes into the current series of Have I Got News For You and my opinion hasn’t changed. The episodes haven’t been bad, but the flaws in the system have been apparent.

One of the flaws in the system is that by stipulating that at least one woman must be on each show, you are in fact reducing the chances of more than one woman appearing on the show. On a show like Have I Got News For You, this is a problem as they do not like to have the same guests appear multiple times in the same series. Put two women on the same episode and that is one more woman to find to put on another episode. This might not be something people want to hear, but the reality is this poses a problem to casting agents. As a result, they are less likely to book multiple female guests for the same episode.

Why is this a problem? Because a good comedy panel show is not about the individual talent but how that talent interacts with each other. QI occasionally had three female guests, other times they would have an all-male panel. The producers worked on getting the mix right as often as possible, and it was a show where all the guests got a fair chance to contribute.

As soon as you start imposing quotas, finding the right blend of guests is no longer the sole objective, and therefore becomes harder to achieve. Having just one woman on a panel can be a difficult situation. At times it will be difficult for them to have their say on a topic (something Mock the Week has fairly been criticised for). On other occasions, such as last week with Bridget Christie, the female guest will go too far the other way and speak lots without really adding to the quality of the show. If you are going to have quotas, make it an even split or don’t bother. Either of these solutions would produce a better product than the tokenism of the single female guest.

Another flaw is why have they drawn the line at gender? After 5 episodes, so 15 guests, there has been 1 non-white guest, Mr Sadiq Khan MP. According to Wikipedia, the panel for the next two shows will be all-white too. How is this representative?  Why are there no quotas to ensure other groups are not under-represented too?

The under-representation of women in comedy is a problem and it is not caused by a lack of talent. I am all for the BBC setting targets to increase the number of female guests, presenters and regular panelists on their comedy shows and I think that no show should be barred from that. But I don’t think imposing a strict quota system for every episode of every show is the right way to go about it. It prevents casting agents from having the full freedom to do their job properly and ultimately will hurt the product.

Manliness

As someone who does not consider himself to be a particularly manly person, I have enjoyed a surprisingly manly weekend. And when I say I’m not particularly manly, I mean I do not enjoy manual labour and I am not a particularly practical person. When using electrical devices, I follow the advice that if you don’t change any of the main settings, there is less chance of something going wrong. It’s a philosophy which seems to work in terms of ensuring a decent lifespan, though I’m sure people could get my devices working faster.

When it comes to DIY, it’s a phrase I try to avoid. I prefer the phrase ‘Let someone else do it for you whilst you play sport.’ If it’s a major job, I will pay someone to do it properly rather than spending hours trying to do it myself. I’ll do small jobs like putting together a chest of drawers myself and do a competent job, though you never want to test the load limit of something I have put together.

A couple of weeks ago at work, I was asked to go out and buy a power drill. Not something the guy who does the social media is usually asked, and it did take up time I needed to spend on my own projects, but I did feel a strange sense of pride at the till.  And even though it wasn’t for my use, I still had a quick go with it.

So to this weekend, and when I got back from the cinema yesterday I found my housemate trying to defrost our freezer. It’s a job which was long overdue, so I thought I should help out. She was melting the ice with steam, which though effective was a very long process. I decided to speed things up by using a screwdriver as a chisel to remove as much of the ice as possible. It was strangely satisfying, and helped complete the job quicker.

Onto today, and after a run and lunch, it was time for some bike maintenance work. Specifically, I was replacing the front wheel. Again, it felt good to be doing something practical. However, some people enjoy these jobs for the process itself. They love to get their hands dirty and get stuck into a task. I don’t, but I enjoy the end result. I enjoy the fact that there is now enough space in our freezer for a couple of packs of Soleros. I enjoy the fact that I can go for a bike ride tomorrow (ahead of a session at the Olympic Velodrome next month). But I’d prefer it if things didn’t need fixing in the first place…