England 3 - 0 Russia

yea,england won!! hahas, owen's double at the first half. ferdinand's strike at the second half, gives england the 3 points they very needed.



this england team looks very promising, and i hope mcclaren will just stick to this formation la. surprisingly the partnership of gerrard and barry looks very solid. and wads more surprising is that, heskey played a big part in the 2 games he played.



now the question is, will mcclaren stick to the formation?



1)will he drop barry for owen hargreaves/lampard?



this is a tough question to answer, gerrard is a must in midfield. while lampard, i guess he can only be a sub, people will surely be wondering if barry will face the injustice of begin dropped for the sake of hargreaves. that's for him to think la. however, i personally feels that the partnership of barry and gerrard look more promising then gerrard + hargreaves. but lets not forget that the barry gerrard partnership is only tested by the "minor" countries so far ya?



2) will he drop shuan wright phillips for beckham?



well,as much as i respect beckham,the answer is a firm no,i believe the only person who can threaten swp of his right mid role now is either aaron lennon,or steven gerrard. while gerrard is better in the centre, and lennon is still recovering,beckham can slowly earn his 100th cap as a reward for his contribution towards england.



3)richards for gary neville?



they are both very good players, but its time for gary to hang up his boots,dont get me wrong,he is still a very good player, but as age is catching up with him,he needs to think more about club football now. but the ironic thing is, i still hope gary plays for england. so i think the best solution is for gary to be on the bench, so even if richards got injured, theres another great right-back in neville to back him up.



sometimes,having too much talent in your team can gives u a real headache. and england is surely 1 of those teams. look, if you want to play gerrad,barry,and hargreaves in 1 midfield. u got to do the following.



play a 3-5-2,which is not a gd formation for england as past results had shown.



play a 4-4-2,with gerrard on the right, but i would prefer swp on the right.



play a 4-5-1,but that will mean a lone striker upfront, rooney might be able to do the job,putting hesky or crouch alone up there is impossible, owen cannot be a lone striker,putting owen on the bench will be a great waste of talent.



so.. as much as i hate to admit,mcclaren ought to drop 1 of the 3, and its probably down to either barry or hargreaves. so ya.. the answers shall be revealed at the next game.



i think england should really call up another good leftback, for the sake of back up, and the best possible option would be matthew taylor.


wes brown ought to be dropped, i still cant believe it when mcclaren chose brown ahead of carra,tts simply stupid of him. every1 will choose a solid defender thats recongnized throughout the world ahead of a defender that even his own club fans doubted at.

and seriously, i feel that england need to find a new goalkeeper. the mentality of robinson just isnt right. keeper need strong determination, obviously its something that robinson doesnt have,for he said that hes afraid of begin dropped ahead of james. this is surely not a quality that keeper should process.

available keeper, james, carson, foster.

james looks very good,seems to have shake off the tag of claminity james. carson is a very promising keeper,while foster is equally promising, he need to get a loan deal after he recovers if he wants to feature in the england set up.