There is something rotten in the England national team. And I’m not just talking of the manager’s tactics. It seems as though players get injured to a sinister degree as soon as they come to play in camp England… Conspiracy theory, anyone?
Aaron’s knee isn’t new, of course, and if Ledley’s foot starts being an issue again nobody will be hugely surprised. But they’ve actually managed to injure our normally indestructible Michael Dawson! 58 games in the season, only came off once when he was hit on the head, and has taken more knocks than most – all without injury or complaint. Yet one miserable training session with England and he’s out. Dear, oh, dear.
Alnwick, Huddlestone and Routledge are in the U-21 side, should we worry? Perhaps “Psycho”, ironically, is more careful with his players.
Kevin McCarra, my favourite football journalist, seems to share my feeling about Ledley being an option in a holding role; I will take that as a sign that I am neither utterly delusional nor simply biased.
The Championship play-off final I saw a little of, but not, alas, enough to actually comment. As we all know Derby got the final spot and it will be interesting to see how they do next season. Or perhaps how they do in the transfer market before next season… Sunderland and Birmingham I would back to do quite well.
The “we don’t have enough actual news so we will just fill the papers with transfer talk”-situation is already starting to do my head in (even if the daily, mandatory, Mourinho and Beckham stories remain firmly in place and serve to retain a feeling of comfort and normality) but amidst silly speculation it seems as though Martin is trying to send signals of stability. We have signed a young, talented left-back, like we said we would. And new contracts have been offered to key players, Keane, Dawson, Lennon… as well as assurances that new recruits like Berbatov and Zokora have signed long contracts. More will happen, but not a tremendous amount. Our Egyptian contingent looks set to be reduced severely. I hope we can keep Defoe. And I do hope we don’t sign Nigel Reo-Coker.
2 comments:
"as well as assurances that new recruits like Berbatov and Zokora have signed long contracts."
they signed last year; nothing new there; except that Berbatov is already commited to Man U. still a secret but not for long.
Thank god! Why on earth would we like to extend Zokoras contract at this point?
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