Coaching For The Brave

Frank Lampard Frank Lampard Plays For England Shock! With all that is wrong with England at the moment it seems strange that journalists and fan's have questioned Lampard playing against Costa Rica. "England games shouldn't be seen as testimonials" cries one expert, "Play the kids" demands another. How ridiculous. Despite England failing to live up to the lowest of expectations at this World Cup and being woeful in both games, the only thing we've got angry about is one of our established players being picked for the final game. unless this is a serious attempt to deflect any real blame from the current National set-up I'm confused by the commotion. Firstly, no one complained when Lampard was picked for the squad. In fact, I remember many fan's and experts insisting he should go to bring back up for Gerrard and guidance for the youngsters. He's Vice Captain for Christ's sake. So, if he is good enou...

England versus Uruguay Formation  Its been nearly a week now since England fell to Italy in their first group match of the 2014 World Cup. We explained in our last edition  Should England Drop Wayne Rooney?    the real reasons England failed and today we show what the England Versus Uruguay Formation should look like. It's a must win game for both teams so expect either a cagey affair with so much at stake or both teams slugging it out toe to toe. We've taken both situations into account and built a team to get the performance from the personnel available. Oh and yes, Rooney does start! England Versus Uruguay Formation As we showed last time, England's downfall was a ridiculous selection of four forwards who all gravitated to the centre of the pitch. This was a classic case of picking players and then worrying about a system. None of them had the discipline to do the job they were picked for and they ended up stifling each other. So, what's the...

Should England drop Wayne Rooney? Predictably, as the final whistle blew on England' s defeat to Italy, Twitter exploded with abuse for Wayne Rooney. In typical British fashion, the same press that has spent a decade building Rooney into England's talisman couldn't wait to join in and lay the blame for the whole sorry result at his feet.  Club allegiances surfaced and idiots on Social Media everywhere insisted Wayne didn't bring anything to the game and should be dropped. We don't deal in knee-jerk reactions though so let's take a closer look at see if the criticism is worthwhile. So, should England drop Wayne Rooney? The arguments seem to revolve around the following issues: Sterling deserves the Number Ten Role. After such a fantastic season for Liverpool, Raheem Sterling deserves his place in the England squad. However, is he a better Number Ten than Rooney? Well, there is no point comparing International careers so lets look at thi...

Psst. Do you want to know who's going to win the world Cup? Would you like a sure fire way of beating the Bookies? Read on you lucky man... Every bookmaker currently has Brazil as their favourite to win the World Cup. You can get 3 to 1 if you hurry. Why are they favourites though? What makes them so special? I've delved into the World Cup statistics to find the factors that really matter. The ones that over the last 19 World Cups have made a difference. They are fascinating and do lead you to a clear winner. Is it Brazil though? From a statistical point of view the following factors provide the best indicator of a World  Cup Winner. The Continent where the tournament is played, FIFA Rankings from just before the tournament and the average age of the team. Continent By far, this has been the biggest indicator. you can pretty much guarantee that the winner will come from South America. 15 out of the 19 World Cups have been won by a team from the continent tha...

Ryan Giggs has finally given up the ghost and hung up his Reeboks. Great news for defenders everywhere. The announcement has thrown up stats galore. One stuck with me as probably the greatest stat I've ever seen. It's simply mind boggling. Here it is: Ryan Giggs has played at the top level for so long that if George Best had played for the same amount of time he'd have played under Alex Ferguson. That is an amazing piece of information. Do you agree or can you top that? Enjoy your retirement Ryan. Although I think you've got a very busy season around the corner.

Things don't always turn out as you wish. It's a shame really. The boy with the world at his feet has taken more backward steps recently. It just goes to show that pace, skill and a big head aren't all that's required to make it as a top level professional footballer.  After announcing to the world that he was the next great thing Wilfred Zaha has gone backwards. It was never meant to be this way... After Fergie mindlessly blew £15 million on the self appointed teenage protege, Wilfred must have thought he'd made it. The biggest club in Britain wanted him. Unfortunately, no one told him Fergie was retiring and handing over to Mr Moyes. After bit parts in early games Zaha was shipped off to lowly Cardiff.  This is the guy who wanted to show Premiership defenders how good he was. So, how did he do? Well he only managed to play 15 games all season netting...never. This gives him an awesome career of 138 games in total and 18 goals. Yep 18. Defences every...

What will Zlatan be doing next summer? So, after being beaten by Ronaldo in the World Cup Play-off, Zlatan Ibrahimovic reckons "the World Cup will be nothing without him." Most impartial fans would probably agree and it's a shame that both Sweden and Portugal couldn't both be there next year. However, I think he's missed the point. If he was that good we would be seeing him next year.  Ibrahimovic had the tag of "Flat Track Bully" way before Ronaldo did and his Portuguese counterpart seems to be doing all he can to ditch that tag. Zlatan's scoring record is an impressive one in two but his career has a major glitch. He could have played in 3 World Cups already but Sweden only qualified for 2 and guess what. He failed to score at either of them. In fact, in one he was blamed for being greedy and missing when he could have squared the ball for a simple tap in. This led to Sweden's early elimination. So, on the gre...