England under-21s

[Honkytonk]

There's no long term vision in English football and that's the biggest issue.

Because it's run by businessmen. I understand it has to be run in a financially sensible manner, but having the important jobs filled with businessmen is daft. Fuck, I hate Alex Ferguson, but he'd do a better job than anyone there at the moment. You want people who know what's going on in football and have ideas on how to fix it. It's still an old boy's club.

The general problem with everything now, not just football is the lack of long-term vision. Doesn't matter what aspect of life you look at, no-one looks/plans beyond a maximum of 4 years.

[Arriba]

Limit the no of foreigners that can play in each Prem side, ditch the u21 league.
Too much focus had been on trying to mirror other nations. Pointless.

[Paolo69]

Yes Pearce was a bad manager when we got to the final 4 years ago, we were lucky to get there. In fairness to Pearce, it did look like he had practised penalties though. In that championship just like this one, Pearce overlooked the need for strikers, we just attacked set pieces better (and we didn't have goals ruled out for phatom offences)

He must have been bloody lucky. I mean getting to the final of a major tournament and being so poor as well. Yes we had a bit of luck along the way but every team needs that. I would suggest that Stuart Pearce is a reasonable manager who's under achieved this tournament but done pretty well over a number of years with the tools at his disposal.

[adje]

our best u21 side would have got a lot further.

[Red Jed]

Limit the no of foreigners that can play in each Prem side, ditch the u21 league.
Too much focus had been on trying to mirror other nations. Pointless.

Pretty much this, limit foreigners to 2 or 3 per team and maybe do like they do in Scotland where you have to name 3 U21 players in the matchday squad.

[Peter Gibbons]

Pretty much this, limit foreigners to 2 or 3 per team and maybe do like they do in Scotland where you have to name 3 U21 players in the matchday squad.

Think it would be quite interesting to require three under 21 y/o players who would qualify for the national team.  Fucksight more interesting than just trawling the world for foreign players and would surely benefit England in the future.

[The_Doctor]

England Under 21's , England senior team it doesn't matter. The whole Burton training centre papers over the cracks and is an absolute waste of money. Sure more people may play football but it wont be a "centre of excellence to breed world class players". Quite simply the problem is without being racist is the amount of foreigners playing in the Premier League due to the obscene amount of money in that league. The FA says they want to attract the best players in the world to play in their league, well fair enough but it is at the expense of the England national team who will NEVER win a major tournament in the foreseeable future because Young players are not getting experience. No good sending them on loan, young players need experience against top players and that's the problem so until the FA caps the amount of foreign players a team has build your Burton Training centre, but it wont do fuck all because the players coming out of it will never get a look.

[cheltred69]

The PL is effectively a global league being played on English soil.
Not a problem in itself if the best English players could develop in a competitive league (such as the Championship) until they are ready to play regularly at that level.
However, too many of the best of the young English are instead playing in reserve and U21 leagues with occasional bench-warming duties for first teams.

[No Longer Posh Red]

People often blame the money in the Premier League for the poor performance of the England team, but lets be fair the England team were shit long before the Premier League formed.

The difference was that the teams in the first division were then full of Scots, Welsh and Irish players whereas now they come from all over the place.


We failed to qualify for the 1974 & 1978 World Cups don't forget, even the most cynical fan could hardly blame the premier league for that.

[jonny72]

I don't buy the argument that our players are shit and we're not developing talent. Think the real problem is the team not performing to their full ability in major tournaments and if we weren't so shit at taking penalties we would most likely have won another major tournament by now. They need to get a team of sports psychologists in to figure out what the fuck happens to them when they're in the spotlight.

[Honkytonk]

I don't buy the argument that our players are shit and we're not developing talent. Think the real problem is the team not performing to their full ability in major tournaments and if we weren't so shit at taking penalties we would most likely have won another major tournament by now. They need to get a team of sports psychologists in to figure out what the fuck happens to them when they're in the spotlight.

[redjed]

It seems to me that the players dont give a monkeys about playing for the national team. Lets compare them to the egg chasers, they play a international the first differance you see is that the rugby lot sing the national anthem with gusto and seem to be proud that they are singing it ,in fact you look at any of our teams and individuals they all look like they are proud to play for our country. then you look at the football team, it looks like they are embarressed about singing it and it looks like they couind'nt be bovvered, surly by singing the anthem it should inspire them to do well, but no we always seem lethargic and indifferent.
 In a way we do have to blame the EPL, it seems  they do not want to really develope there own players but spend millions on overpaid prima donnas from over seas, the exception being Arsenal who seem to bring a lot of younger players and develope then into large selling assets to other clubs, trouble is in the main they are also overseas players. "sic"
As someone else has said on here we have to make sure thatthat we have under 21 players on the bench and also we are going to have to cap the number of non-english player taking part in a game, say at least 5 of any team has to be english, surly with  that in place we will  begin to find world class players again who look comfotable on the ball and not looking to pass it to the first player they see, as if they are holding a hot potatoe.
 I know this will never happen with all the money that is in the EPL, but we can always live in hope

[bigbobjoylove]

Too much money without doing anything to deserve it. Clubs are petrified of losing young "stars" to rivals in case one of them turns out to be a Rooney so they pay them silly amounts. Players lose motivation to properly improve and dedicate themselves to the game as they've already made it.

[Peter Gibbons]

It's a shame the terrestrial channels couldn't have kept the rights to show live football league matches from the football league once the premier league had split (or did they for a period?)
 

[sonicyouth]

Ah, the good old national anthem argument. Always sound logic implied there.