What a terrible night for England, Steve MacLaren has to go and somebody new must come in, we can do well in the short term with someone like Jose, Gus, or any other top name coach but things in the long term look bleak. Take a look at England's forward line for the game last night, yes Rooney and Owen were injured but the 3 players involved last night were Crouch ( who was the best England player) Defoe and Crouch, these 3 all have one thing in common, none of them is a regular starter for their club sides, Crouch has Torres ahead of him, Defoe and Bent have Berbatov and Keane in front of them, we may have the best league in the world but that is to the detriment of the England national side, look at Arsenal, Theo Walcott is the only English player in the team, and Chelsea have Cole, Lampard, Terry and Wright Phillips, Man Utd, Liverpool have Steve Gerrard, its a bit obvious isnt it? there are way too many non english players playing for english clubs, as long as this continues the national side will struggle to qualify, we need to place a limit on non english players, put the emphasis on home grown players, when I say home grown I don't mean the French and Spanish kids that Arsene Wenger seems to love to get his hands on, I mean English born players, its time to put England first, but that will never happen because the Premier League is awash with obscene amounts of cash, clubs are desperate to stay in the premier league and will pay top dollar for average foriegn players, the top clubs need the Champions League cash to stay afloat, look at what happened to Leeds, its not a healthy environment for our top clubs, but it will not change. Premier League Clubs have academies, but we need to start from the bottom, kids football is a joke, I have seen 7 year olds being taught how to block players, how to win free kicks, and there is precious little work on ball skills, even at kids football level its win at all costs, I have been to games to watch my son play and seen the opposition spend the entire game kicking lumps ot of Dans team, and in one particular game the parents were an absolute disgrace, the atmosphere was poisonous, thank god my son does not play anymore, and he is playing cricket. Until we sort all these problems and forget the notion that we deserve to be at these tournaments we will continue as we are, second rate......
Golden Generation? My arse.