ijjysmith
Calm
Well I'll be. That Sweden game had everything. From an England fans point of view i was exhausted, angry AND overjoyed at the end. There was some truly horrific moments in there. Olaf Mellberg....seriously Olaf bloody Mellberg. He's 145 years old and his beard is 146. When it went 2-1 Sweden I felt like kicking my kitten, but I didn't. And now i'm glad I didn't. In previous years there is no way, no way at all, that we would have come back into that, so I guess the comeback can be seen as a positive, but the bad parts (AKA Glen Johnson and John Terry for me) cannot be forgotton. There is still no way we are winning this tournament.
I'm going to go with the negatives here. At one point during the game Mark 'Meh' Lawrenson was praising Glen Johnson for a great tackle. And it was a great tackle...but if he wasn't so sh*te in the first place he wouldn't have been in that position would he? WOULD HE? Then there is John Terry. I take it we all saw John Terry being out paced by Zlatan and his big nose? It was embarrasing. And finally in the axis of sh*te we have Ashley Young. Now of all the players England have I thought he might actually turn up. But my god he's been terrible. Which leads nicely onto this man:
Now how there is any question about him coming back in I will never know. He simply has to. But who for? That's the question. Carroll, as much as we despise him, scored a brilliant header. And it was a brilliant header. I'm not sure what he did other than though. Welbeck seems to be the golden boy even though he was average apart from a great goal, and then there is Milner, Young and Walcott. I guess it's good that there seems to be plenty of attacking options. I'd be tempted to have Young (or Walcott if fit) wide and go with Rooney just behind Welbeck. They ripped Everton apart earlier this season, and we have a better defence than Ukraine...I think. Sorry Andy, you're still sh*t. In defence, Johnson will stay as we have no choice there, but if I was Hodgson i'd seriously be thinking about bringing in Jagielka for Terry.
Now onto our hosts...even though England are technically the home team for this. Luckily Rebrov....actually no idea where he is nowadays, but luckliy Shevchenko is only rated 50/50 for this at the time i'm writing this. That has to be a good thing, as looking at their team on paper, there isn't much else. Except this guy:
LOL
I don't know much about Ukraine as a country. Googling some pictures was an education. They look nuts. Whenever I think of Kiev...I think Chicken. And how one gave me food poisoning at uni. That's just another reason why I'd like England to beat them, along with the other more obvious reasons. In fact, are Chicken Kievs actually from Ukraine? Does anyone know the answer to this?
Anyway, Ukraine have to get a result here to go through. Their crowd will be all over this, and I can see that scaring England a bit, as they already seem to sh*t themselves when the ball is at their feet. Despite England seemingly having a superior squad this will be tight.
Roy's done alright if you ask me. I know it can change overnight being England boss, but he's doing not a bad job. Having 4 points at this stage has outdone my expectations and if we get out of the group then it's a job well done. Even though we probably won't go further than that. He got a lot of praise for the Walcott substitution, but was it me or did Milner look injured anyway? Either way Walcott did the business and made Roy look even better. The Ukraine game will be tough, but I bet Roy would have taken 4 points from 2 games. As we all would. He's just using tactics for the players we have.
I won't dwell on who England may play next, as this is England. We might not even get there. I will say so far so good.....but with some insanelely worrying moments along the way.
