I don’t share the blind faith enthusiasm which has been a constant travelling fan with England to every tournament for decades but the cause for my trepidations doesn’t just lie with the on field displays but focuses quite firmly on the tactical ability of Roy Hodgeson as savvy England manager.
By and large he’s untested until now. The press have given him a fairly easy ride considering the posses of witch hunters they have unleashed in the past on former managers such as McLaren, Taylor, Hoddle and Keegan to name but a few and we as fans haven’t had much to judge him by other than a few qualifying matches.
The game against Italy on Saturday posed some glaring questions about Hodgeson’s tactics and game plan. Most notably, Rooney out wide on the wing and Gerrard going AWOL for much of the game.
England started out as they always do…All guns blazing. Sterling was inspirational and injected the fire we have not seen for many a game into the team which was probably one of the very few decisions Hodgeson got right in his selection of him. Welbeck was a surprise start on the night.
The defence had a handful of schoolboy errors littering the match at the back. Hodgeson overlooked the quality of Darmian and Candreva as they terrorised Baines down the left which, because of Rooney playing out of position with a focus on going forward left Baines totally exposed and ultimately punished.
By the time Italy prepared for their second goal, it was a shell shocked Cahill who made the absolute basic mistake of the first rules of a defender…”Stay behind and goal side of your man”. Cahill did neither, and at this level and especially knowing the devastating power of Balotelli England paid the price of defeat.
I can only assume that the great England rock that is Gerrard, was told to play a defensive role all match. This allowed the Italian midfield to dominate in the centre of the park and push England back well into our own half only to be content with playing possession football across the back. It may have looked confident, it may have looked controlled, it may have looked decisive. But what it most certainly didn’t look like at 2-1 down was effective.
A number of no hope punts through midfield resulted in nothing as after the Italians soaked up the pressure for the first 20 minutes or so, they cleverly worked out England’s simple tactics, reorganised and then shut us out. It was at this point, Hodgeson should have shuffled the plan around and mixed it up a bit but no, our build up style of football was cut off at the knee and was left to the individuality and skill of Sterling to pick out a clinical ball to Rooney who managed the only effective thing he did in the whole match and put a pin point cross to Sturridge who dispatched as only a quality striker can.
Rooney’s other near contributions (due to his misplaced position) on goal was of Sunday league standard. A player of his worth and goal scoring talent at club level should at least hit the target from the 3 shots he had all game but his wide attempts were shameful.
Given that England set out with an attacking 4-2-3-1 formation you have to question why we spent most of the game defending with the odd panic stricken bolt up field. It’s quite clear. The tactics didn’t match the formation and players were asked to play out of their comfort zones and more importantly, when Italy re organised to stem the barn storming attacks of England at the start of the game, Hodgeson was clueless as how to counter it. We had one game plan and once that had been figured out that was it.
The stats show that in the first half, England had an aggregate of four and a half players consistently in the attacking half and in the second half we had just four men in the attacking half which is worrying considering that at this point we were a goal down and needed the extra fire power to draw level. The Italians had an aggregate of five and a half men consistently in the attacking half throughout the whole game which is why we were on the back foot and being pressed right until the final whistle.
Going into the Uruguay game they will have watched how Italy dealt with us and they will be easily be able to replicate how to contain us. Bring the game to us and make us camp in our own half as we have no cavalry to lead an effective charge up field as a coherent team so the pressure is really on Hodgeson to deliver a team (in this do or die match) that has contingency plans to deal with all connotations and eventualities.
A further concern would be, if we do go a goal up, will Hodgeson shut up shop and hope to defend the lead? I honestly don’t think our defence is good enough or organised enough to deal with an onslaught of a team that also has to win at all costs.
We need to get Rooney back in the middle with Sturridge, push up Gerrard and Henderson to take control of the midfield working close together and get Sterling and Welbeck burning the wings as they have the ability to either cross or drill inside their full backs towards goal at pace.
Whatever happens we cannot have another promising or even “heroic” defeat because as we have seen against Italy, it counts for nothing on the group table.