Both are in charge of fairly average teams and no amount of shuffling people around can disguise the fact they are short of world-class talent.
Roy’s boys tried to play football on the floor against Ukraine this week. But their shortcomings just highlighted the fact that we aren’t very good at the possession game.
You can’t change a style of play overnight and it will be 10-15 years before the next generation are brought-up through the ranks looking comfortable on the ball.
Our centre halves saw more of the ball than most at Wembley as we incessantly passed sideways and backwards in our own half.
Which made it all the more baffling why England’s only ball playing centre half – Rio Ferdinand – has been frozen out of the side.
Lescott and Jagielka are good stoppers but Beckenbauer and Moore they ain’t.
The best teams in the world use possession to hurt the opposition in the final third but we have to suffer the boring build-up without an end result.
England weren’t bad – they were just a bit average and that’s something we need to get used to for a while.
The current crop of strikers aren’t good enough to paper over the cracks and the performance was summed up by Frank Lampard being made Man of the Match.
He must be good mates with judge Andy Townsend because bar the penalty, Lampard was virtually non-existent as a midfield presence all night.
Lampard scores penalties, we all know that. But we also know the fabled Lampard/Gerrard partnership offers a reverse alchemy in the midfield.
It’s time to let go of the past and build a team for the future with only Joe Hart guaranteed his place.
We’ll probably go backwards for a few years. But we might, just might, win something before I go off to that great west side in the sky.
Enough about the national side and my mortality – who is going to win us a few bob this weekend?
Step forward form horses Chelsea and Man City who can land a double during trips to QPR and Stoke.
Not the most original choices or the biggest price – but 2/1 on the league’s richest clubs both winning looks a decent bit of business for the weekend.
Betting Spy has joined forces with Paddy Power to offer all readers a free bet when they open an account. Just click on the link below to visit construction’s favourite bookmaker to find out all the latest prices and follow the easy steps to setting-up an online, telephone or mobile account
Running Total for all 2012 bets to a £10 stake: +£259.00
