5 Positives to take from England vs France

 Gareth Barry - who like most England fans watched the match purely as a spectator

 I'd like to commence this post with a quote taken from the bbc football website, which sums up the consistently painful experience that watching England has become, succinctly and accurately :-

"There are only two types of England games these days - the false dawn, and the reality check"

So thank you 'Bales left peg' from the 606 forums - a doff of the cap in your direction.

So as an antidote to this mornings wave of pessimistic England related articles including such harbinger of doomesque quotes as -  "a gruesome exposure of England's current limitations" and "the cries for the Italian boss’ sacking grew louder from the fans."

Thankfully here at TAC we woke up this fine morn with an altogether more positive outlook on last nights 2-1 drubbing. I would still call it a drubbing, even at 2-1, but still it wasn't all bad was it? was it? it was? At least we can take these 5 positives from the game :-

1. Andy Carroll

 

 
 So Fabio decided to go against our best advice and selected Andy 'controversial' Carroll to start. Despite all we have said about him he is definitely They All Count's new favourite player and he certainly did himself a lot of favours last night, by being easily England's best player on the pitch. Although saying that is like saying he was the least dirty pig in the farm (or some other, wittier comparison of that sort that actually makes sense) he showed flashes of the centre forward England needs, a target man with a good flick on and an eye for a goal, who could potentially be the first person to succesfully partner Wayne Rooney for England.

2. Capello willing to experiment 

After a dissapointing world cup in which Capello stubbornly refused to play any other formation than the 4-4-2, big man little man formation, even when it CLEARLY NEEDED TO BE CHANGED - it was nice to see Capello going with a 4-5-1. Ok, it didn't work. Ok, we played long balls from deep to Carroll who won almost every header but had no one to follow it up. What it does show is that Capello has begun to embrace the idea of a plan B, or a changed plan A. This is important as clearly something about how England are playing is wrong and it looks like Fabio is trying to address this. Lets just hope its not because we didn't have enough fit players to play any other formation because that would be sad.

3. Young talent blooded

With debutees Carroll and Henderson both starting alongside Keiran Gibbs, it was again encouraging to see Capello allowing the next generation of potential England stars a run at the French. As mentioned earlier, Carroll had a good game by comparison, whilst Henderson and Gibbs looked overwhelmed and out of their depth - but at least they got a game. It was a shame not to see Jack Wilshere play, who pulled out with a late injury, as he has shown so far this season that he is fast turning into a very accomplished central midfielder who can hopefully take over from Gareth Barry who is just getting WORSE AND WORSE with every game.


4. Peter Crouch

 Still scores and will score goals, for England - Fact

5. We didn't lose 4-0



Like the so called 'world champions' Spain who lost 4-0 to an impressive Portugese side. It would have been 5-0 too if they above goal from C-Ron had stood - and what a goal it would have been...

So in summary :-



Apologies for the use if caps in this post.