Havent read the thread so much but heres my two pence.
The reason we were eliminated so early is for various reasons but I think for me at least there are three very clear reasons we are taking an early flight home.
1. Overwhelming support for essentially rubbish/inexperienced players.
The first game I caught on my way home from a flight and when I arrived at the place I was watching it all my friends were raving about Sterling....I was baffled, what I witnessed from him were various runs to the byline resulting in smashing a cross into someones shins. I was bemused to find out his only real effective piece of play was the pass to Rooney...I was later even more bemused when he started against Uraguay and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. Not only him but Sturridge, providing nothing in the entire two games other than one tap in and couple of hopeful shots, he simply isnt as clinical as everyone thinks, for the team he literally offers nothing, how many times are you screaming PASS at the screen. Barkley looked good for roughly 2 mins when he came on and proceeded to go completely missing, offering yet again nothing to the team.
I wont go into everyone but heres a little round up of people who shouldnt have started the uraguay game: Henderson, Gerrard, Johnson, Sterling and perhaps Jagielka.
People were ranting and raving about the way Everton and Liverpool have been playing, fantastic, yes but sorry, when was the last time those players played in a high pressure international competition like the CL or even the EL, honestly how could we expect a team full of players more used to battling against West Brom and Palace with literally no experience from playing teams such as Bayern, Barca, Real? Even the likes of Gala, Dynamo and so forth. From the moment we were arrogant enough to think these players could automatically play to that level, we might as well have booked our flights home.
2. English Press
As usual the English press chose to pick out a player and absolutely berate them for no apparent reason, embarrassing, NO OTHER country does this, yet we leak game plans, slag Rooney off for what? will it help? How embarrassing is it that our own players have to defend themselves against our own media. Not only that but the utter ridiculous and misplaced hype for substandard players was shocking.
3. England have no central creative players
Countless times in the match we would get into the right positions, start circulating posession around the edges of the box, not a single player made an intelligent run and if they did there was no one there to place the pass, we decided to go for players that can do a job rather than create anything new or unpredictable.
I wont rabbit on too long but I wasnt shocked or surprised to see us go out, it was obvious, sometimes we are in our little bubble in the prem, we dont look at the bigger picture nor understand the game on the continent, we think simply slapping the players together and hoping for the best will work. We want to drop players in favour for someone who can do step-overs. We want to play old "legends" because wed be "worse off" without them with no regard for the opposition at all, for the level of competition. For some reason unknown to me Uraguay were cast aside as an easy victory. As usual the country with the best league in the world has a bunch of clueless ride alongs in the press.
Incidentally this would have been my team based on the first game and needing a win in the second.
Forster (CL experience, less flappy than Hart)
Jones (CL- Title Winner)- Cahill (CL Winner)- Smalling (CL- Title Winner)- Baines (No other option)
Wilshire (CL)- Lampard (CL Winner)
Ox (Risked it, CL)- Rooney (CL Winner)-Lallana (No one else, very creative)
Welbeck (CL, scores in big games)
Yes the new blood should have gone, but relying on the likes of Henderson, Sterling was shocking to me. Sterling should be used like Januzaj for Belgium.
Fell free to destroy me, but it was embarrassing how we are behind such over rated players.
