The reason we bought the Swede in was to rejuvenate the side, because every England manager before him wouldn't dare to not play with the old well-known faces... Remember the side with the likes of old boys such as Ince, Wise, Batty etc...
Well the Swede did good, he got shot of the old has-beens and bought in lots of exciting young players to join the experienced boys such as Becks and Neville etc. The team looked much better and we seemed to instantly compete at a higher level.....
Now it seems that Sven too has sadly fallen into the 'Must player the big name players' trap and history looks to be repeating itself again as todays older players will be flogged until they drop...
Let's look back at the Brazil 98 squad, how many of those players were still in the Brazil side come the world cup of 2002? A few yes, namely Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Cafu, Ze Roberto, Dida, R-Carlos, and Junior, but that's it for the whole squad 7 players! there was not one midfielder from the 98 squad in the 2002 squad (ok execpt Rivaldo, but he's more a striker really...) so in 4 years they had dropped 15 players to gain 15 new, now that's change, that's progress, and that's what wins world cups!
OK, Brazil is a country that seems to churn out masses of football talent to a level which most other countries can only dream about. Still they could have easily stuck with some of those players from the 98 squad, some of whom still play at a high level today, but they don't, they move on using new, exciting IN-FORM players instead of relying on the usual suspects...
Sven will never drop the likes of Becks and Owen even if they are in terrible form. Sven insisted on playing a half-fit Beckham at the last world cup when several better equiped, fitter players could have taken his place and had more of an impact. The Brazilians are not affraid of change, the England managers are, the media is most of the problem, dictating how a manager should be running the team, I fear that the first team and even the squad will need another good shake up some time soon and this won't be done until Sven goes...
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