France1 England 0

Well the honeymoon period is over and now Cappello now knows the extent of his job.
Dis-jointed, lacklustre, boring, wrong formation to start with, Rooney up front on his own a no no and so many more negatives can be thrown into this so called performance! Was hardly worth the French fielding a goalkeeper at all. All the build up to this being a first real test of Capello's tactics and boy did he get it wrong! What this footballing nation needs is a solid England performance with passion, regardless of the result. We did not get that last night and i really can not see how Capello is meant to be the savour of english football when his tactics for tonights game were so wrong. All we are asking for is a bit of passion when you throw that england shirt on guys for petes sake!!!!!
On the showing of the last 2 games i can't see any difference from what we saw under steve maclaren.

This post was last modified: 03-27-2008 08:51 AM by greavsie.

I think that France are one of the top 4 international teams in the world,and England are not. So a 1-0 loss isnt all bad.
But last night I noticed the following:


Beckham was only fit to play half the match,in the second half his crossing was far too deep,his international career is over.

In the second half England turned to the long ball to Crouch,showing that France outclassed them.

Englands crossing was very poor in my view,and if you are going to play direct football you need better crossing.

I also agree on the passion part of your thread Greavsie,Gerrard and Rooney disappered.

We lacked flair and imagination and although the French appeared to be in control for the majority of the game they lacked it too. A boring game as most friendlies are. Another chance for Capello to get the measure of his squad and Becks to get his hundredth notch, but other than that not a lot gained by anyone.

We need genuine wingers. Without these Crouch loses his value as an international striker. Yes, he can punt in 6 yard line chances too, but he lacks the strength, work rate and speed of genuine quality international centre forwards. He'd be lucky to warm the bench for most good national teams. We are short of non injury-prone, high quality strikers at the moment.

Also, aren't we supposed to be getting away from long ball hoofball?

I think Beckham's inclusion was more a gesture. Of course he deserved it, but I doubt we will see him start in an England shirt again outside of friendlies.

Good point about crossing. We need better crossers, especially if we are to stick with Crouch up front. If someone was able to put the ball on his nut regularly I am sure we'd see a few more England goals.

This post was last modified: 03-27-2008 01:52 PM by Chivers.

Trying to look for positive indications in the England squad was extremely difficult. At a stretch i would say the back four were reasonable at best. Ashley Cole tried the wing back game a few times, nobody really made any attempt to get into the 'box' awaiting the cross maybe, it was that they already knew that Cole's crosses were either tame lobs into the French Goalkeeper's hand or blasted far too long/high and went out of play.

It is difficult to put any blame onto Rooney, Owen or Crouch's performance as the service they got was almost non-existent, which left them with no other choice than to come back deep and try and collect the ball.

Beckham has now got his 100th Cap and should do the decent thing and forget about any more Caps, he showed that he should no longer be a part of Cappello's long term England developement. The long ball approach by Beckham just showed that he had run out of any ideas of how to breach the French defence.

As for the Captaincy, well i thought anyone could have done Ferdinand's job last night or we could have just played without one.

I find it very hard to find what postive's Cappello got from the game.
There is total lack of commitment, passion and hard graft when these Players put on an England Shirt, albeit just a Friendly game.