Come in Number 10

Written just after England's decisive qualifying defeat against Croatia on November 21 2007

Over the coming weeks much will be written about what is wrong with English football. Steve McClaren, perhaps deservedly, will take much of the stick, while the argument will continue to rage about the effect of foreign players on the national team. It will be said that the country is not producing enough young footballers of the requisite pedigree. This is not entirely true. Over the last year Micah Richards, Theo Walcott, Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor have emerged, Walcott excepted, from the shadows as outstanding candidates for the senior side in the future. They are all superb athletes, blessed with searing pace and in Richards' case a frightening physicality. They are products of the modern Premier League, a place where place and power rule, but what of their old bedfellow precision?

What is true is that England are not producing a certain type of player any more, the old fashioned no10, capable of operating in the grey area between midfield and attack, putting his foot on the ball and orchestrating play. Nowhere was this more in evidence than on Wednesday at Wembley in the shape of Croatia's Luka Modric. For all England's passionate bluster, their fate always looked to be at the whim of the diminutive yet destructive Modric. Until England find a means of developing this type of player they will continue to look pedestrian and cumbersome in international football.

It is clear that these sorts of players do not exactly grow on trees in England. It is ironic that Chelsea have been linked with a move for Modric when they already boast in their ranks the English player perhaps most suited to the role in Joe Cole. Sadly, for club and country he has developed into a left-winger who, though full of endeavour, spends most of his time doing step-overs on the halfway-line rather than influencing games where it matters. Wayne Rooney, like Teddy Sheringham before him, has the ability to link play but his style is more get-up-and-go and he tends to operate further forward for England. Steve McClaren clearly recognised the inherent lack of guile in his squad. He was in principle admirably committed to solving this problem by employing pace on the flanks, but consistently showed his weakness by reverting to the staid tactics of his predecessor whenever failure beckoned. He was a weak man caught between two stools, a decisive ditherer, whose reign will forever be defined by his inability to trust his own mind.

The last English player to really occupy anything approaching the Modric role at international level was Paul Scholes under Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan and initially Sven-Goran Eriksson. Under Hoddle, Scholes thrived in the now distrusted and discarded 3-5-2 formation, while under Keegan he was given enough license to score an international hat-trick. That said, even Scholes was not a conventional no.10, with his Ferguson instilled work ethic if not his tackling skills giving him a defensive capacity that would have been beyond a Hagi, a Scifo, a Modric or a Kaka. Before Scholes one must turn via the unfortunate Gascoigne back to Hoddle, so gifted yet so typically mistrusted by England during his playing days. He alone among recent England managers has shown any inclination to give the country's most talented ball-players their head in the final third of the pitch.

A look at the makeup of Premier League midfields is revealing. Very few attack-minded 'creative' midfield players are given license to operate in a central position. Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal is an exceptional exception, while the vision of Scholes and Anderson at Manchester United is supplemented by a tireless work ethic. All are shielded by exceptional defensive minded partners. Elsewhere managers are less forthcoming in going forward, with most play-makers accommodated by their teams in wide positions, notably Elano at Man City, Mikel Arteta at Everton, Steed Malbranque at Spurs and Yossi Benayoun at Liverpool. Elano and Arteta are consistently excellent, but the other two would undoubtedly benefit from a more central exposure in midfields that have notably underperformed this season. Seba Veron is an example of an old-fashioned play-maker who could not adapt to life on the margins at Old Trafford. Scholes aside, the injury-prone David Dunn at Blackburn is the sole regular English exponent of the creative central-midfield art in top-flight football. His manager Mark Hughes has also been unafraid to entrust the impressive David Bentley with a central attacking responsibility, all while maintaining an enviable defensive solidity. With a successful stint as Wales manager already on his C.V. Hughes looks increasingly the outstanding candidate for the England job, a man who knows his own mind in an increasingly fear-driven environment.

So why this distrust in the ball-player? Premier League midfields are increasingly reliant on the power of African imports, a trend understandable in the modern era as any team seeking to thrive in the Premier League must compete first on a physical level. Whether this emphasis on hard-running and harder-tackling is a recipe for success remains to be seen. It was clear watching Nigeria play Australia recently that, for all their enviable power, African teams too continue to lack a player who can operate in the style that Harry Kewell did that day, dropping deep and picking holes in the opposition defence. Their lack of subtlety is glaring, and it is difficult to see an African nation fulfilling Pele's phrophecy and winning the World Cup until they address this problem. It is worth remembering that the two outstanding midfield pairings in English football in the last ten years contained an enviable balance of defensive solidity and attacking nous, Roy Keane and Paul Scholes at United and Patrick Viera and Emmanuel Petit at Arsenal.

The standard Premiership midfield now comes pre-packaged with a powerful holding midfield player and an energetic box-to-box player who can score goals (see Sissoko and Gerrard, Essien and Lampard, Zokora and Jenas). Most managers are happy to see their creativity come purely from the flanks, whether it be in the form of a wide-playmaker like Arteta or the out-and-out winger such as Cristiano Ronaldo. The problem, however, is that a great number of these creative players are foreign: Ronaldo and Nani at United, Hleb and Rosicky at Arsenal. There are attacking English players featuring in the Premier League: Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Walcott, Young, Agbonlahor, Bentley, and Aaron Lennon are the most prominent, but with the exception of Cole and Wright-Phillips, the English fliers are at the start of their careers.

So what does the future hold? Clearly, the English game does not produce players in the style of Luka Modric, but Steve McClaren's successor cannot afford to bemoan this. He has pace and trickery at his disposal in wide areas, and must organise the midfield in a way as to best provide our wingers with the ball in the areas in which they can hurt the opposition, high up the pitch. Never again must lumping balls up to a big-man be England's sole means of attack, and if this means crushing a few egos in the middle then so be it. After all, we are at the end of a campaign in which England have failed to pass through Macedonia at home.

Whoever follows McClaren has a hell of a difficult job. Young English talent will continue to compete physically with Makelele and outpace Mikel but, for now at least, they will not be able to outpass Modric. He must have the courage and the judgement to clip the wings of the established and give his young wingers their heads when it is appropriate, as they represent the best hope of conquering the present malaise. If he dithers, he will quickly come to a sticky end like his predeccessor, stuck in the mud of no-man's-land.

What happened to Wayne?

Written just after England's qualifying defeat in Russia on 17 November

Wayne Rooney's volleyed goal against Russia was stunning in its simplicity and brutal in its execution. It was also a goal that evoked hope in English supporters. Hope that England would go on to clinch the win that would secure qualification for the European Championships, and hope that here, finally, Rooney was showing signs of growing into the player that he had threatened to become in that heady summer of 2004, and answering the critics who claimed that he was no longer worthy of his place in the national side.

Sadly, fate is rarely sentimental. England lost, and in a cruel twist it was Rooney himself who clumsily upended the Russian right-winger for the equalising goal. Rooney's eagerness to help his side out defensively was to ultimately cost them dear. For Rooney the goal-getting hero of 2004 read Rooney the defensive villain of 2007. His goal aside, his contribution was fitful, his partnership with Michael Owen once again anonymous. So where has it all gone wrong?

Before chairs are thrown from tables, it has obviously not gone that wrong. Rooney was a vital member of the United team that swept (for at least half the season) majestically towards the Premiership last season and helped to reignite the public's passion for a domestic game that had endured two seasons of Chelsea's unchallenged monotony. The problem, in so much as there is one, lies in the fact that his flashes of genius are now increasingly rare, so rare that even the most ardent United or England fan could no longer claim that Rooney is one of the Premiership's, let alone the world's, top players. Good? yes, Great?
no.

Whereas his teammate Cristiano Ronaldo goes from strength to strength and trick to trick, the byword for Rooney is now functionality. He possesses in abundance what his club manager Sir Alex Ferguson has always demanded from his players, a willingness to graft hard and for the team, as epitomised in that fateful moment in Moscow. He willingly fills in at left midfield when Ferguson persists with his controversially conservative 4-5-1 formation, and the audacious long-range efforts of old have disappeared to be replaced with sideways passes. He is most probably now a more mature and better all-round player than when he arrived at Old Trafford but at what cost has this been to his hopes of greatness?

Improving the allround game is such an unsatisfactory term in itself; just ask Jermain Defoe and Emile Heskey. While neither were as talented as Rooney, as young men both had the potential to be significant international players. Yet somewhere along the way, while developing their 'allround game', they misplaced the confidence and gumption to keep doing what had got them there in the first place. Heskey lost the ability to turn and drive at defences in the way that so terrorised the Argentinians at Wembley in 2000, while Defoe discarded the single-minded head-down scent for goal that marked him out as such a predator in his time at West Ham and early days at Tottenham. Both appear jaded by experience, and while injuries have led to a very different Heskey's temporary resurgence, Defoe remains in the doldrums, still searching for the fearlessness of his early career. For Rooney to go the way of these two would be criminal. He must seek to regain what marked him out as special before it is too late. It may already be so.

Where is the joie de vivre of the Rooney who scored a hat-trick on his Old Trafford debut, the audacity of the youngster who juggled the ball on his knee on his full England debut aged 17 against the uncompromising brutes of Turkey? It seems to have disappeared somewhere in a fireball of metatarsal injuries, constant press scrutiny and the relentless treadmill that is now the life of an international sportsman. The old anger is still there, but seems more borne of frustration at the diminishing of his powers than a healthy flame inside. Playing football appears far more of a job for Rooney than you would want it to be for a 21-year-old with theoretically well over a decade left at the top level. But then again Rooney is no ordinary 21-year-old, having already played 40 times for his country.

While in the past England managers have been criticised for not giving their most technically gifted players a run in the team (Hoddle, Barnes, Le Tissier), Rooney has suffered no such problem. Of course he brings more to the team as a whole than all three of them, but it looks increasingly like Steve McClaren persists with Rooney on the basis of what his prodigious gifts once promised to bring. It cannot be for his recent international form taken in isolation, which while by no means being derisory has not been good enough to warrant depriving the team of the tall striker that statistics prove Michael Owen needs along side him to score goals consistently. And that is what England need and have needed all through this qualification
campaign: Owen's goals.

Ironically, it was from Owen's unlikely and impressive leap that Rooney took the ball on his chest to give England the lead in Moscow. Sadly that was all that was seen of Owen of note on another night that he and Rooney notably failed to work in tandem. This might be forgiven in isolation, away from home on a plastic pitch in the cold of Russia, but cannot be when the same trend was in evidence against the fragility of the Estonians at Wembley four days earlier. Something, surely, has to give with the return of Emile Heskey and Dean Ashton.Heskey and Owen showed more chemistry in two games last month than Rooney and Owen have in three years, and this cannot be ignored any longer. But what a crime it would be, for the gifts of Rooney to be substituted for the brawn of the derided Heskey. At United, he fits seamlessly as part of a global ensemble cast of stars, but his country require more from him. The problem is that Rooney is no longer as we once knew him, and until he returns to that level, the team must come first.

Is it our fault we have to ask ourselves, the nitpicking media and the baying public? Has the culture we have created demanded Rooney's conformity because flair and genius is something the English rarely possess and so are naturally distrustful of? Would the English have tolerated the sporadic, inconsistent yet mesmeric genius of Gheorge Hagi and Enzo Scifo in the way of the Romanians and the Belgians? Not if the gradual assimilation into the ranks of the similarly talented
Joe Cole is anything to go by. For the grin of Ronaldinho and the wink of Cristiano Ronaldo read the grimace of Rooney, because he is English, born and bred in Toxteth, and what English sport cherishes most are blood and guts and heart and soul; you need only look to the England's Rugby players in Paris on Saturday to see that. What chance of greatness did Rooney ever stand in this framework?

To turn to cricket for a comparison, Kevin Pietersen was lauded when he first played for England because he displayed a very un-English (unsurprisingly for a South African) lack of fear of situation or reputation, qualities equally synonomous with Rooney at the start of his career. With Pietersen's boldness came risk, occasional failure, yet a bravado that captured the imagination of the public and prematurely did for the stodgy Graham Thorpe. As his career has progressed, for a number of reasons, including several media backlashes when things have gone wrong, he has tempered that bravado. Unadulterated showmanship has been replaced by relative circumspection. As his Test figures show, he is undoubtedly a better
all-round player for it, yet England fans have missed his devil-may-care attitude in the shortened forms of the game, where he has appeared confused by his change of identity. While cricket is technically a team game, there is a clear focus on the individual. Consequently, Pietersen has been able to showcase his improvement and sheer weight of Test runs mean few save the romantics rue his changes
in approach.

Unfortunately for Rooney, football works differently, and consequently his progression as a player has not been so clearly visible. He is a striker, and as such is judged ultimately not only on goals, but because of his reputation, spectacular ones. They have been few and far between of late, with significant goal droughts for United in Europe and England
in competitive fixtures. While he has broken both, such trends beg the question as to whether we have seen the best of him already at 21?

Only time will tell, but if so, perhaps we should not be greedy. For that one summer, the possibilites for Rooney and England were endless, the future was an open door. That is a rare and exceptional feeling, and he bestowed it upon a whole country in a way that no player had done since Gascoigne. At least he had the chance to stamp his genius on the international scene, unlike the unfortunate Robbie Fowler, whose best days were the preserve of the Kop and was washed up at 23, but would
have graced any field in the world before then. That may sound sacrilegious, but Michael Owen has never been the same player since he was voted European Footballer of the Year at a similar age in 2001, and arguably never the same since he too terrorised Argentina at the age of 18.

But this is not an international obituary; it doesn't have to be like that. Rooney is 21. The talent is clearly still there, waiting to come out. In his next match he will probably score a hat-trick of volleys from outside the area and I will happily eat my words. However, until then, until he rediscovers what made him England's Wayne Rooney in the first place, England and McClaren must let go of the past and pick a team that serves Michael Owen and will beat Croatia.

Will the transfer window please hurry up and shut

A small rant about the transfer window. Why on earth is it a month long? All the excitement that has built up between September and January at the prospect of some good old transfer speculation, the prospect of replacing the moron at left-back etc. quickly dissipates after two-and-a-half weeks of constant and often ridiculous rumours and very little action indeed.

Most transfers seem to happen either right at the beginning of the window or right at the end. The delay in deals is inevitable as clubs on either side of the deal wait until the last possible minute hoping to squeeze an extra bit of cash out of the buyer or force the seller to lower their price. We saw it a few years ago with Louis Saha and Scott Parker, and this window Watford have shamelessly created what amounts to an auction for Ashley Young, pretending they don't want to sell when they have intended to all along. After a while it just gets bloody boring, and you can't wait for the thing to shut again.

One solution would surely be to shorten it to two weeks. That way clubs have enough time to do their business, less time to stand-off against each other, and less time to bore us rigid.

Foolhardy West Ham must beware the Leeds effect

For West Ham fans, this transfer-window must be a bittersweet time. Their side sits 18th in the Premiership, but has just embarked on a spending spree unprecedented in the clubs history. Financed by the mysterious new owner Eggert Magnusson, Alan Curbishley has signed Luis Boa Morte for £5m, Callum Davenport for £3m, Nigel Quashie for £1.5m, bid £10m for Ashley Young, supposedly £12m for Darren Bent and are reportedly on the verge of signing Lucas Neill for £2m.

This in itself is not cause for alarm. Magnusson appears to have the money to finance the signings, and West Ham are in need of some major reinforcements if they are to beat the drop this season. What makes for uneasy reading is the salaries that West Ham are apparently offering (all these terms have been touted by the tabloids, so must be taken with a pinch of salt) to try and entice these players to a club in a relegation battle. Young, a 21-year-old with half a Premiership campaign behind him, was reportedly offered £50,000 a week over five years, taking the total value of his deal to £20m. Bent tried to take advantage of the madness and asked for £100,000, while Neill has apparently turned his back on the 'dream-move' to Liverpool that he has hankered for all season after the promise £50,000 a week at Upton Park was more attractive than a paltry £35,000 at Anfield.

Fine, if West Ham stay up this season the policy will be deemed a success. They will be another club with an owner prepared to support a massive wage-bill, as don't forget those already at the club will also demand an increase. Next season they may even challenge for Europe with their re-jigged squad, and go some-way to paying back these transfer fees.

But what if it goes wrong? West Ham fans know only to well there is no such thing as 'too good to go down', and relegation would be a financial disaster. The playing staff would surely have to be gutted, for example one cannot imagine Neill's new found allegiance to West Ham would extend to playing in the Championship. Not only this, the club would be left with a crippling wage bill. One only has to look at Leeds, still paying £46,000-a-week to a player as average as Gary Kelly, not to mention subsidising Robbie Fowler's contract at Liverpool, to see what effect this can have. They too sit in the bottom three of their division, only they find themselves in danger of oblivion, relegation to League 1, and this a club who reached the semi-finals of the Champions League five years ago. And what about Magnusson? Will he hang around to bail out his new toy? He displayed a calculated coldness in his treatment of Alan Pardew and West Ham fans must hope he does not treat their club the same way at the first sign of trouble.

This may just be a hypothetical scenario. West Ham may stay up, in three years they might be bloody good, and Magnusson might be there lapping up the applause. But, if they flop and end up going down with the Watford, it'll be very interesting to see how long Magnusson, Neill and co hang around to get them back up again.

Newcastle show story-book can be reality....

Yesterday's match at White Hart Lane between Tottenham and Newcastle served as a welcome reminder of football's occasional ability to rise above the hum-drum and produce a genuine story-book ending.

Newcastle simply had no right to win the game. Missing a whole team, and a bloody good one at that, through injuries, they were most decimated in defence - reduced to fielding a back four of a right-winger and three raw, if talented, youngsters.

Early on a rout seemed on the cards, as Spurs poured forward with pace and verve and could have had four inside ten minutes. Surely Newcastle couldn't hold on? They didn't, Defoe had the ball in the net on 13, his third good chance, ironically this one was offside. Yet however inexperienced Newcastle's defence may have been, they had Given, and he was all that mattered. Captain in Parker's absence, he was as acrobatic in the early stages as Robinson was static when the ball drilled through his legs to make it 1-1. Spurs had led for just two minutes, and the scorer was the 19-year old left-back Huntingdon, in just his eighth appearance for the club. Boys-own stuff indeed. His other fullback wasn't doing badly either- Solano was everywhere, coming up with several goal-saving blocks as Spurs laid siege again. One such lunge to deny Tainio met with rough-justice as the rebound fell to Berbatov, who volleyed down into the ground and in. It looked like game over. Surely Tottenham, boasting a home record bettered only by Manchester United and Liverpool, would go on and win comfortably.

Thankfully football takes no notice of statistics. After Martins had smashed the equaliser Spurs looked stunned. So stunned, in fact, that they neglected to track Butt's midfield run and the game was lost. Butt, the match-winner, had of course spent all-week in bed with flu, losing 9lb's in the process. To add to the irony, he could easily have been sent off at half-time after an unsightly fracas first with Chimbonda and then his own team-mates. But that would have ruined the story.

Spurs will hang their heads, 24 shots and just two goals tells the tale, but they should take comfort from this when they next find themselves in trouble, and remember that occasionally the story-book comes true.

England's cricketers must take note of Boothroyd's Watford

Catching the end of the Watford v Liverpool game earlier today, I watched mindlessly for a while before my eye was drawn to the score at the top of the screen. Watford were trailing 3-0, a score unsurprising in itself, yet one that did not seem in keeping with the game in front of me. Here was a side in Watford, 10 points adrift of safety with one win all season, facing another heavy defeat at home. By right they should have been a rabble, yet they continued to pour forward with verve and passion long after the game was lost. Liverpool- clearly superior in every department, would every so often slice through the opposition rearguard at will, but Watford, unfazed, came straight back at them, refusing to admit defeat. Here is a team with solid leadership- Adie Boothroyd is a strong, shrewd character who has no pretensions of where his team stands in the world order. Their pool of talent is lower than any other team in the Premiership yet they continue to perform above themselves, and hold their heads high. He has instilled in them a sense of pride in performance and a commitment that should embarrass many teams above them, and if they are relegated this season will no doubt return soon.

Among those who should take note are England's cricketers. The talent at their disposal is in a different league to Watford's, yet they have been reduced to a running joke before our eyes, precisely because they lacked what Watford have in abundance - strong leadership and a clear sense of direction. When a team lacks this, the wheels come off very quickly, as we have seen in Australia, as panic sets in and quickly becomes contagious. Strong leadership in itself is not a guarantee of success, but certainly a step in the right direction. What Boothroyd would make of Steve Harmison's antics one can only imagine. Michael Vaughan's strength of character has been emphasised by his absence, and his return has come not a moment to soon.