He was 3rd choice for the job despite what Barwick says but he was.
Look at that f---ing line up of no mark who came out in the press conference to announce the sacking.
Barwick - better known in Media
Dave Richards - overseen the downfall of sheff weds
david gill - man utd chief exec
sheepshanks - ipswich chairman
geoff thompson - who
the list goes on - there was also representatives from the bloody amateur game FFS.
All goddamned administrators who don't have the 1st clue about bloody football - might as well put our names in the hat and pick 10 of us out.
Time to get football people involved people who care about the game, have PLAYED the game at the top level
Shearer, Ian Wright, Wilkins to name some. OK You may not like some of the people but they know the game they've played the game, know who is and who isn't a decent manager. Trevor Brooking is at the FA time to make him chairman get rid of Barwick.
Or am I talking tosh
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Comments
MacClaren has been a VERY well respected figure in football circles for a coulpe of decades now. As a coach at Oxford, and then Man U, he was regarded as one of the most forward-thinking, revolutional coaches in the game. At Middlesborough as a manager, he lifted them to a tier above their natural level, like what Alladyce did at Bolton. Its only now others are finding that that was harder to achieve than it looked.
On the flip side, he shouldn't of got the job because he was a major factor in the failing Ericsson era, a clean sweep was needed not continuity. He has made some poor decisions and the players have not responded as they should. He has been badly let down some players in my book.
Maclaren may well be no Alf Ramsey, but he is no Mike Bassett either.
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
What i cannot fathom is how somebody from the amateur game has a say in the matter. While i respect their managment of local amateur sides & legues, how on earth are they qualified to have an opinon on whats best for the national side when their normal day is about organising local Junior Cups and refereeing?
That's it FA idol.
How about running that show for a couple of weeks next June?
England Manager Idol !
The programme format could be thus;
We get a live interview from Ant and Dec,
then we get shown previous famous victory games the manager has chosen (available on red button replays during the comp),
they get to give a rousing pre-match team speech against an pretend German match at wembley etc....
we get statistics,
we get family background interviews of the wife and kids.... and they get to give fake post and pre match interviews,
Then we get a phone in vote and get to see the results after the 10pm news! rather than leaving it to a bunch of stupid half wits in a job for the boys club called The FA. twats.
How can we have Premiership Chairmen with such self-interest having the utmost influence over the FA?
They are the ones writing the cheques for the foreign players and then the ones ruling the roost over the national team, the fact only 32 English players turned out in last week's round of matches says it all really
Such easy scapegoats
arsenal... top of the league... only theo walcott available for international selection - what country are we in here?
the FA needs sorting out, the next manager needs to be appointed taking as much time as possible, there's no point in rushing, we've got until September for the new guy to get fully into the groove, a few of the U21s need a chance to establish themselves and a few of the overpaid bastards need to be left on the scrap heap
why the likes of Agbonlahor, Young, Reo-Coker, S Taylor, even Walcott weren't on the pitch in Austria in a meaningless game last Friday says it all - cost us Owen, naive at best
David Bentley could have made it at Arsenal, but his attitude was always the problem, compared with someone like Fabregas.
for every Fabregas, Toure, Clichy etc. that Arsenal have there are 3 lads from Islington going to Barnet instead of Arsenal and their aspirations with it
The inflated prices on English players are making it totally impractical to buy english - so some clubs are neither buying NOR producing
Darren Bent for 16.5mil says it all about the long-term problems in the national game, only half a dozen clubs can afford to buy top-end English players these days
look at Italy - they've got it spot on at the moment with their 1 non-EU signing per club per season rule, something similar needs to be done, as well as the 3 U21 qualifying players in the matchday squad that Scotland are doing as we can't limit EU players because of the freedom of movement for workers
Personally I find it ridculous that the likes of Arsenal, should be allowed to field 11 foreign players.
Look at the birthplaces of Arsenal's 79 Cup Final winning team vs their team that beat Reading last week.
1979 2007
Newry - Pamplona
Belfast - Sens
Belfast - Abidjan
Ipswich - Asnieries
London - Paris
Edinburgh - Abidjan
Middlesex - Arenys De Mar
Mexborough - Marseille
Dublin - Prauge
Caterham - Minsk
Doncaster - Lome
So even then Arsenal had 5 non-english players. Liverpool played a european cup final with no english qualified players in the starting XI in 84 i think.
The foriegners are not just cheaper they are better. The riches of the premier league mean that clubs can buy players from anywhere so they do.
Even at the time when english clubs won 6 european clubs on the trot 77 to 82 we still failed to qualify for WC 78 and did nothing at Euro 80 or WC 82.
What can we learn from the other countries? It's not wealth stopping kids playing as France, Germany and Italy are rich countries and the US produces lots of very good athletes.
I don't have an easy answer as I don't think there is one. I think it is a 20 year project to change the whole way we coach kids, the game they play, the balls they use, the pitches they play on, the emphasis on skills and on winning, etc, etc, etc
The same impact will be had with players.
More true of the managers than the players. The players will get to play. Which English players had been denied premier league football who could have played for the national team. Walcott maybe but who else? Bent and Defoe have had loads of chances but Darren at least was just never picked despite being top scorer. Nothing to do with Bartlett keeping him out of the team.
1979 2007
Newry - Pamplona
Belfast - Sens
Belfast - Abidjan
Ipswich - Asnieries
London - Paris
Edinburgh - Abidjan
Middlesex - Arenys De Mar
Mexborough - Marseille
Dublin - Prauge
Caterham - Minsk
Doncaster - Lome[/quote]
So even then Arsenal had 5 non-english players. Liverpool played a european cup final with no english qualified players in the starting XI in 84 i think.
[/quote]
Hence why I used the term British - it was no coincidence that Northern Ireland qualified for Spain 82, Mexico 86 & Scotland made 3 successive world cups. I would be happy with a limit of 5 non-British players in a 16 man squad. Let's see how the likes of Wenger cope then.
Liverpool never played a European Cup Final with an Englishman free starting XI.
How about we just deal with the cultural problems in English football first? like the love of effort over style, workers over artisans, and booing teams when they use their brains and play an extra pass.
We need to improve coaching in this country at all levels, get kids as Henry said learning about the game properly, developing their core stability etc etc, then we might compete with the Germanys, French, Italians, Croats etc etc
I am not against foreign players in our game, rather that we allow the clubs to bring in real quality & play these guys alongside home grown players young & old.
Can't see the problem with that. I guess it's only the TV couch potato & vast Asian based audience that will scream about removing the overstocking we have of foreign players - the true fan gets a huge kick of seeing a player come through the ranks & compete at the highest level - look at the pride we have had in the likes of Parker, Konchesky, Basey & er.. Lisbie representing Charlton. I'd far rather see a Parker come through then waste money on a Blomqvist or a Faye.
It would make our league much more interesting as well - at the moment, the big dominant clubs have no restrictions on the talent they can buy from around the world & have little or no interest in developing talent.
Make them develop coaching & scouting systems to bring players through the hard way. It would also hugely benefit the lower league clubs who would finally be able to make money again selling home grown players.
I agree about the mind set of the FA & some fans - too many years of Howard Wilkinson, Les Reed & Charles Hughes type figures running the technical side of the FA is a massive part of the reason we are, where we are.
Rooney is a better player for playing alongside Ronaldo, Walcott is a better player from learning from Henry, Scott Sinclair hopefully has learnt something from Drogba.
36 out of 44 players that started the last round of Champions League games for teh English participants are foreign.
I'm listening to Premier League spokesman pooh-poohing the idea of quotas at the moment, of course he would - his interest is in making as much money as possible for the corporate sponsors, club chairmen & TV companies & screw the consequences. It's a sad state of affairs when the entrenched interests of money & brain-washed/star struck fans can't wake up & see that unless we take this opportunity to do something - the game is screwed.
We didn't qualify in 74 and 78, what was the excuse then when we couldn't blame Johnny Foreigner?
I just can't stomach this blaming of foreign players for the ills of English football, it's something far more profound then that.
But if people want to argue that playing average English players at the expense of better foreigners is going to improve the national side, then fine, but I can't agree with it.
Unfortunatley this will be seen by some with such inclinations as discrimination against "Johnny Foreigners", however I see it as positive discrimination in favour of the youngsters in inner cities, towns & villages all over the UK.
There is no lost generation, however there is hope for future generations - with better coaching techniques, nutrition & facilities - it is the future generations who stand to benefit - surely this is what the whole soul searching of the last 24 hours is about.
look at some of the other top end teams... how many teenagers do you see in a France, Argentina, Italy , Spain or Holland shirt week in week out, barring once in a generation players like Messi? they stay in the U21's and they earn their stripes, they aren't rushed, exactly the way Wenger is treating Walcott right now and look at the difference in the first few months of this season...
In Benzema, Toulalan, Nasri, Ben Arfa and Diaby France have got real world class players of the future hitting their 20's still in single figure caps
For Spain read Silva, Albiol... Bojan (their 17 year old "Rooney") has only just moved up from the U17's to the U21's
You only have to look at the strength of squad in how seriously others took the European U21 Championships of this year... whilst we picked a squad without a full cap between them, Portugal, Holland and Italy threw in regular full internationals who still qualified like Nani, Maduro, Babel, Aquilani and Chielini and actually tried to give them a chance at knowing what being the big fish in a small pond is like and winning something.
and then we wonder why players like Michael Owen get to their mid20's as exhausted, injury prone wrecks while the likes of Luca Toni and Van Nistelrooy seem to blossom a few years further down the line - is it too much too soon that's leaving a gap later on and meaning the cycle starts all over again?
Drogba, Shevchencko's Torres's o this world are good for the league because our young English talent can learn from then. But when you have the likes of Amdy Faye, Diawarra, wigan have some shockers , etc y, you get my drift, plying their crap in our leagues that is when it hurts.