Fabio Capello Finds The Answer To England's Footballing Problem

Fabio Capello: "We played 4-3-2-1. We played Defoe, Gerrard and Rooney and three midfielders behind them. He [Gerrard] went to the left and to the middle."

"The problem is not with the style we played, but the difficulty we have when the other team play the counter-attack," added the 62-year-old.

"It is always dangerous and we have to study this problem."

When Capello is finished studying the problem he will see that the key is to bring the opposition out of their trenches.*

The way to do this is to keep stinging them from distance. No one on earth can regularly score from distance, especially not an Englishman, so the alternative is to feed the ball in with disguise from distance to the forwards so they have time to turn, to play balls over the top and through with great variety and speed.

Who from the birthland of football is capable of such things? Barry? Sorry but no, Huddlestone? Hargreaves? Lampard? No, not near the levels of speed, variety and accuracy required.

Stinging from distance with the forwards England have will soon get goals against anyone. There is only so much of that a team will take before it decides to cut that service off at the source and the opposition midfielders will start to roam into England's half to stop Carrick thereby giving the English forwards the room to do their stuff.

With that extra room comes the other more concealed advantage—they will hardly give the ball away and therefore will not be counter attacked as often. The opposition will also be more tired and more stretched and won't be bursting out of the traps into a counter attack like a coiled spring, they will be labouring into it.

But Carrick has played several times before and he's never transformed the England team like I'm describing has he? Making all his team mates seem like the world beaters we keep saying they are?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jqE4rMejw

Carrick was indeed left out of the next game and we crashed out of the competition. 

But what about his lack of affect on the dismal away loss to Croatia? McClaren played him in the opponents half, with Scottie Parker playing the defensive midfielder. If Carrick is in the opponents half they don't need to venture into England's half to stop the service at the source, so they do not come out of the trenches. If you play someone yet further behind Carrick still you are wasting an attacking option.

Capello was going to play Carrick where he ended up playing Barry, or at least he was going to give them a half each. I really hope Carrick is fit for Andorra and Capello doesn't crack and scrap the 4-3-2-1. We're so close to the attacking fluid England team we've all dream of!

*Not convinced? England like Spain, Brazil and Argentina take the game to the opposition, it's in our blood or maybe our culture and is a combination of honour and spirit. Lesser opponents became aware of this and developed simple strategies to use it cunningly against us.

They sit back, and tightened up, we try to get through, they break it down and counter. We repeat and repeat, until someone says enough is enough and we stand off and wait for them to come out and say we're not going to attack until you come out. But it feels wrong and we can't play like that so its not long before we're doing it again and we're getting counter attacked.