wijit wrote:There was no excuse to persist in starting with the player who should've done the most but was clear from the off he was goin g to do nothing. I would've rather had heskey than Rooney on that pitch after five minutes of the first game it was crystal clear we were getting sod all from him.
Heskey is incredibly under-rated by so many people, and to be frank, your above statement explains why so many of us are supporters and not managers. You have a forward who will take two defenders with him, make it bloody hard for them to get the ball and still get a half decent cross in. That isn't a non-producer, that is someone making good use of his own ability making space for someone with a better eye for goal.
The aspiration of the team should not dictate whether to take someone like Heskey, sometimes a player is worth taking purely because of what he does, and not what he doesn't do.
He's in the team as a striker.
International football is (or ought to be) about flair, skill, excitement and goals. Not a Laurel and Hardy act.
Agreed that Rooney was hopeless, but in knockout football if you're a striker then you've got to be able to adapt to the fact that a fellow striker is having a bad day, and score goals yourself. Not look like a lost soul.
Look at the teams that did well, they all had flair players in abundance, who weren't totally reliant on someone else taking opponents out of the picture.
If England continue with that 'steam-age' approach then guess how far we'll get in the future?
