Gary Speed, England v Wales, self harm.

[StaffsRam]

The players coming through into the national team are poor and the players still there from the golden generation are now getting too old, I think Wilshere will become a good player, but doubt he'll ever reach lampards level.

Presumably Lampard's 'Chelsea' level, as he's never been that great for England anyway.

Losing the 'golden' players doesn't necessarily bother me too much, I'd rather just have good 'team' players. The German sides down the years have excelled at becoming more than the sum of their parts - England haven't managed that for a very long time.

Wilshere will be a decent player, Smalling will develop, as will Jones, Cleverly, Wellbeck and a host of others.

I think the problem we have at the moment is that because of the prevalence of the golden generation players we've never really been great at succession planning, and now that we have a lot of those player retiring or falling away from the squad, we don't have adequete replacements readily available. Instead we're having to make do with short term solutions like Downing and Milner, players who ordinarily shouldn't be anywhere near the England side.

At least we've now woken up and realised that those older players need replacing. The inclusion of Wilshere, Smalling and Young in recent months, and the intended inclusion of Wellbeck shows that we're nearly at the point where we should have a steady supply of decent youngsters coming through to be seeded into the team again. Something that we haven't really done since the likes of Beckham, Scholes, Butt and the Neville's were graduating from short pants!

[Ghost of Clough]

At least we've now woken up and realised that those older players need replacing. The inclusion of Wilshere, Smalling and Young in recent months, and the intended inclusion of Wellbeck shows that we're nearly at the point where we should have a steady supply of decent youngsters coming through to be seeded into the team again. Something that we haven't really done since the likes of Beckham, Scholes, Butt and the Neville's were graduating from short pants!

Young is hardly a youngster anymore at 26.

[StaffsRam]

Young is hardly a youngster anymore at 26.

It's all relative. He's young compared to Beckham!

Although, that is much older than I thought he was!

[MuespachRam]

I disagree, I know you've got a strong opinion against the national side but my own personal opinion is that the current squad looks completely painful compared to the 'golden generation' and hoddle, keegan, sven and mcclaren made an absolute balls of it IMO which sort of shows when 2 of them are applying their trade at minnow championship clubs another is in a traning camp in the mountings of spain and another is probably still banging at the door of mike ashley.

The players coming through into the national team are poor and the players still there from the golden generation are now getting too old, I think Wilshere will become a good player, but doubt he'll ever reach lampards level.

I have a pretty strong opinion about the national team, certainly not against them. Believe me, there are a few of them I cannot stand, but on the whole I think it is as good as it can get.

We wouldn't have won a major tournament with the Gerrard and Fat Frank and Terry and Ferdinand etc etc if we had got Lord Jesus Christ managing them, because of the fact that the "golden generation" just simply weren't that good.

At last we are starting to get rid of them, Fat Frank showed last night that he is old and tired, and has never really been good enough at international level, Terry will always get ripped to pieces by any decent centre half, Gerrard is fit as often as Darren Anderton's old sick Uncle and we look so much better without Ferdinand anywhere near the team, trying to pass his way into trouble all the time.

On the whole, I think we have a decent "team" at the moment, we have a very capable goalie(Hart) which we haven't had for a VERY long time, the best left back in the world (Cole), one of the best strikers in the world (Rooney) who on form can win any game single handedly, a potentially great midfielder (Willshere), surrounded by players like Young, Downing(who looked really lively last night), Bent (on form, a great finisher), competetion for the centre half spots, and the best manager in the world.

Saying all that, we will qualify for the Euro's, go to Poland all optimistic, win a couple of games against Greece and Russia, and then crash out, probably on penalties, against either Portugal, Germany, Spain, Holland or Italy.......

but we can but dream can't we..

(already booked the trip over....cannot wait....this is the last time though, definitely, just like Sweden was in 92 or France was in 98, Belgium was in 2000, or Japan in 2002 etc etc etc)

[Van der MoodHoover]

"Fat Frank" (who isn't, actually) is by no means the only problem but he is entirely symptomatic of a succession of coaching regimes who pick on name and statistics rather than form and fit into the system of play.

Lest we forget there was unending clamour to include him into the team in 2004...on statistics and apparently form. The thing that was missed is he looked at his best in a Chelsea side that played 1 up so he scored loads by arriving "late in the box". Even at Chelsea he didn't look half as effective when they changed THEIR system to playing 2 up.

But putting him into a completely different system simply showed his lack of ability to actually make anything happen if it wasn't delivered on a plate.

Coaching and coaches bowing to media hysteria would seem to be the problem there. All the way from mop-top faux geordies, through swedish gigolos, soon-to-be-NFFC-castoffs to italian geriatrics.

Having said that, I seem to remember Fabio spouting a mantra of "keeping possession and not being afraid of the ball" when he first arrived. What's happened to that? Are we to believe he is coaching the team to jog around at about 5 mph patting the ball 5 yds to each other?

no, no, the problem's definitely the players. Bunch of overpaid losers. Nob-heads wearing hair transplants, increasingly daft tattoos and embarrassing WAGs.

Oooh dear....I think I've over-analysed......nurse!......nurse!!

[Boycie]

"Fat Frank" (who isn't, actually) is by no means the only problem but he is entirely symptomatic of a succession of coaching regimes who pick on name and statistics rather than form and fit into the system of play.

Lest we forget there was unending clamour to include him into the team in 2004...on statistics and apparently form. The thing that was missed is he looked at his best in a Chelsea side that played 1 up so he scored loads by arriving "late in the box". Even at Chelsea he didn't look half as effective when they changed THEIR system to playing 2 up.

But putting him into a completely different system simply showed his lack of ability to actually make anything happen if it wasn't delivered on a plate.

Coaching and coaches bowing to media hysteria would seem to be the problem there. All the way from mop-top faux geordies, through swedish gigolos, soon-to-be-NFFC-castoffs to italian geriatrics.

Having said that, I seem to remember Fabio spouting a mantra of "keeping possession and not being afraid of the ball" when he first arrived. What's happened to that? Are we to believe he is coaching the team to jog around at about 5 mph patting the ball 5 yds to each other?

no, no, the problem's definitely the players. Bunch of overpaid losers. Nob-heads wearing hair transplants, increasingly daft tattoos and embarrassing WAGs.

Oooh dear....I think I've over-analysed......nurse!......nurse!!

I concur.

[Alph]

Completely agree with hants ram.

Lampard adds plenty to his goal tally via penalties too.

People say Italian football is boring. Just how does the tempo of the England team compare? Especially with the passengers that played last night.

[Bris Vegas]

Stats..! The only stat you need, is Cole and Rooney are the ONLY two players in the England squad who would get even close to getting in the Spanish squad....Baines, well, he would just about manage the Scotland squad.

Like someone has already said, Cole, a piece of work he may be, but as a left back, he is the best in the world.

I disagree, but only because he's the only attacking leftback in the world.. Teams like Brazil, Barca, Real, Spain, Germany etc.. All play the RB as a right winger (Dani Alves, Maicon, Sergio Ramos, Phillip Lahm) etc.. so the LB has to be a solid LB, one which doesn't attack and keeps his shape and shifts the play to the right..

Ashley Cole gets all the praise because him and Evra are the only attacking LBs I know of, thus get noticed more.. It's unfair to compare say Abidal to Ashley Cole, when one is given the licence to bomb forward and the other to sit back and defend..

All the world class teams I can think of go down the right instead of the left except for Chelsea..

Ashley Cole should be judged compared to other attacking fullbacks instead of other LBs.. I can tell you this 100%, Ashley Cole isn't half as effective as Dani Alves or Philip Lahm going forward.. Not a patch..

There are much better defensive LBs out there than Ashley Cole, and much better attacking fullbacks out there than Ashley Cole.. All IMO of course, he's still a top fullback make no mistake..