ENGLAND PLAYERS LET DOWN

BETTER TALENT MANAGEMENT NEEDED

No one came here for a hot take on England, but my word, that's what you're gonna get.

Why don’t international federations lean into the talents the players possess?

• Strongest league in the world

• Two best EPL teams play JdP football

• Extreme pressing with outrageous intelligence

• Disgusting attacking output

When England had a Golden Generation of players, Arsenal were winning titles with an all-English back five. We should have used them as a unit and focused on how we could build around them.

England did NOT do that.

Now we have Arteta and Guardiola as the two best coaches in the league - the byproduct is the most intelligent players in the world.

So who do we put in charge? A PE teacher with the charisma of a rain-soaked packet of Pickled Onion Monster Munch.

I can’t keep reading how Foden is actually rubbish because he can’t play Southgate-ball.

I can’t, in good conscience, accept that Saka is subbed off for under-performance in a game not set up for him.

England picks comfort-food managers who don’t know how to manage prestige talents. If this were tech, it’d be like putting Best Buy staff in charge of Apple programmers. It’d be like asking Dagenham Motors part-timers to reimagine Ford so they could compete with Tesla (okay, maybe BMW or Lucid).

When untalented people manage talented people, it doesn’t work. When untalented people (you, 28 handicapped golfer) play with talented people (scratch), our collective shitness brings down the level.

That’s where England is.

What's the solution?

They either go all-in on a manager who understands JdP - like Graham Potter - and see how that lands. Or, they put a manager of mega egos in charge, like, say… the English version of Carlo Ancelotti. I’m not sure that name exists. It could have been Frank Lampard or Stevie G. But let’s be real, those two can’t hold a candle to Roy Hodgson. They’d be shite. Maybe we have to wait for James Milner?

To be honest, I’d take a healthy 4x3 piece of oak as our manager over Gareth, who was pining for Kalvin Phillips after drawing with Denmark.

Okay, we can exit this post with a transfer story - Portuguese media is claiming a deal with Sporting has been agreed for Gyokeres - bar price. I have no idea what we’re thinking striker-wise, but I’d suggest Ornstein saying we’re chasing a winger over a CF holds more weight than a random Portuguese publication suggesting we’re about to drop £100m on a player with one season of second-tier football under their belt after exiting Coventry the year prior.

Signing a 26-year-old for £100m from a subpar league when Ivan Toney (who is hanging with Declan Rice a lot at England camp) is available for £60m doesn’t make any sense to me.

I think Arsenal would rather pass on a striker than take a risk like that, but who knows!

Okay, that’s me done. See you in the comments! x