Foresight - England in Brazil, via Southampton & Liverpool

So, we all know England won't win the World Cup. Let's get that clarified straight away.  I won't go into the reasons why, that's for others to debate and dissect.  But as things stand now, we're probably expecting a half-arsed effort and an exit with a whimper in Brazil this summer - just like every other summer in recent memory (except 2008 of course).

But the good new is it doesn't have to be like that.  England could very easily go out of the tournament having delivered a high-octane, energetic and exciting few games, enjoyed by football fans the world over.  And there's no reason such an approach wouldn't see us progress past our usual stumbling block of the quarter-finals. Let's face it, we've nothing to lose at this stage.
So, the question is - how?  How do we prevent the inexorable and inevitable slide towards abject disappointment once again in FIFA's showpiece tournament?

Who is on form?

The answer may come from the two Premier League clubs who have, this season, showcased some of the country's most flourishing talents.  Southampton and Liverpool.

Both clubs have performed exceedingly well in the last year or so, guided as they are by modern, progressive coaches in Mauricio Pochettino and Brendan Rodgers respectively.  Luis Suarez aside, most of the standout players for these teams have been English, and any national coach heading into a major tournament should surely be considering the players at his disposal that are most in form.  He should also consider how best to get such players to replicate that form on the international stage.

Daniel Sturridge and Jay Rodriguez - two English players who have impressed this season

Put very simplistically, you would expect these players to be picked ahead of others, no matter what those other names might be.  However, as we saw against Denmark, it's just not that simple.  In that game, Roy Hodgson did indeed pick several Liverpool players - but rather than employ a system to suit the players, he picked the system first and then decided to make those players try to fit that.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work.  England won 1-0 with a goal from Sturridge, but it was a limp and unconvincing team performance, with Sturridge spending much of his time on the field in an unfamiliar wide position.

The English players who are most in form for these two clubs have been: Adam Lallana, Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert, Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge.  There is also Jon Flanagan and Luke Shaw to consider, but I shan't focus much on defenders in this piece.

What system?

Taking the above names, there are a couple of systems you could employ to try and get the best out of them.  I would lean towards a 4-2-3-1 formation, with a view to adapting it into a 4-3-3/4-5-1 as necessary during the course of a game.

Under these considerations, here is the team I'd throw out:

Given this formation, we can then begin to look at how the squad might take shape.  We'd take three goalkeepers, according to FIFA regulations, so obviously that's Hart and whoever you're comfortable with as backups should it come to that.  Personally I'd say Forster and Ruddy, but it's largely irrelevant.

Defenders

I think that back four above picks itself.  Johnson isn't the best right back in the Premier League but he is the best English right back at the moment.  Besides those four, we take three other defenders as cover.  Might sound a risk, but that's sort of the aim of this. Take a risk.  Often England are too cautious.  So we'd need one out-and-out centre back, then a centre back who can also deputise at full back, and finally a full back who can play either side.  I won't name names for these roles; I'm concentrating primarily on the front six here.

Midfield / Forwards

We've already got Gerrard, Henderson, Lallana, Rodriguez and Sterling.  I'd add to that - Carrick, Lampard, Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Now, I've long advocated the absence of Lampard from this upcoming tournament.  But in considering the positions and formation we'd be looking at here, I wouldn't be averse to him coming on for 20 minutes.  The thing is, he's unlikely to lose his cool under pressure and if we're leading could easily help to see the game out.  And there are few English central midfielders who are making an outstanding case to be included - though Gareth Barry could be considered in his place, having had a respectable season at Everton.

Carrick can also accomplish the sensible "hold the ball, pass it about" role should it be needed - he has averaged 88.3% pass completion this season.  And, as with Lampard, I don't see anybody immediately making a case to displace him.

Barkely is having a very good season and gets included on merit - if we require a sudden spark of creativity from the midfield, he could be one to provide it; the youngster is 8th in the Premier League for successful dribbles per game.  I don't think he's anywhere near mature enough to start in the World Cup, but he's a great option to have available.

Finally, "the Ox", who is more than capable of playing in the forward line, although he would almost certainly be used off the bench rather than starting.

Captain of club & country - Steven Gerrard has revelled in Liverpool's system this season

Strikers

I've often wondered why England squads that are centred around playing two strikers only include four such players.  But ideally in the system I'm suggesting we'd only ever play with one out-and-out centre forward, so taking four should be fine.  I would suggest: Daniel Sturridge, Wayne Rooney, Rickie Lambert and Danny Welbeck.

Rickie Lambert and Danny Welbeck are purely squad options at this point - Lambert can fulfil the centre forward role effectively, and should slot in comfortably to a team already containing Rodriguez and Lallana.  Welbeck, though perhaps not Manchester United's most potent threat, has put in decent performances for his country, and keeps the ball better than even Sturridge or Rooney (dispossessed 1.7 times per game as opposed to 1.8 and 2.1 respectively).

One Striker, and the Wayne Rooney Conundrum

Yes, I am a Liverpool supporter and yes, I have selected Sturridge to start and left Rooney on the bench.  "Bias!" I hear you cry.  Not so.  If we're talking about only starting one centre forward, it has to be Daniel Sturridge.  He is ahead of Rooney this season in terms of goals, shots per game, successful dribbles, fouls drawn, and (as mentioned) he gives the ball away less.

These are the cold, hard facts.  We must also consider that in the 10 years since Euro 2004, Rooney has never really performed at an international tournament.  Not that he is to blame for England's woes (that's definitely a team effort), but given that he has not struggled for club form in that time, all evidence suggests a repeat of the same in Brazil.

To counter this, there is a positive - Rooney can play as a striker.  He can also play, probably more effectively, behind the striker.  Therefore should the game require changing, Rooney is ready to come into the team and make a difference.  He has 10 assists this season, and is the joint-best Englishman in the Premier League (with Steven Gerrard) for key passes completed per game (average of 2).  He can make a difference.

Plan B?

I toyed seriously with the idea of including a "big man" centre forward in place of Welbeck; probably Andy Carroll.  In the end though, it came down to whether we would look to sacrifice principals.  The moment such a player steps onto the pitch, you are compromising the style of play utilised by the likes of Southampton and Liverpool.  Players would be far too tempted to simply ping the ball up to him in the penalty area.

Brendan Rodgers wasted no time in shipping Carroll out of Liverpool, having concluded that the big Geordie didn't fit his system.  Yet Rodgers does have a "Plan B".  You re-shape the team, the midfield, the defence.  You adapt.  "Plan B" does not necessarily mean that you immediately become West Ham.  

Have Brendan Rodgers and Mauricio Pochettino shown England the way forward?

The biggest obstacle

Unfortunately the biggest obstacle to utilising this strategy is the man who would be tasked with managing it - Roy Hodgson.

Let's get something else straight.  I do not think Hodgson is a bad manager.  For a certain level of team or club, he is actually a very good one.  But we're talking about the sort of club for whom mid-table mediocrity represents a "good season".  He simply isn't a progressive enough coach to successfully deploy the kind of fluid system I'm talking about here, nor get the best out of the sort of talents that make the system work effectively.

Roy Hodgson will be in charge of England in Brazil this summer.  Therefore all of the above is just speculative conjecture.  I'm just asking the question - "what if we did this...?"  Because anything has got to be better than the predictable struggle and inevitable disappointment that surely awaits us.

If the FA actually want to build a potentially successful national team, they should look to the clubs that are already doing some of the groundwork for them.  And then they need to somehow tempt a coach into the job that can recreate it.  It can work.  But it requires the men at the top to be bold - for once. 

The Truth

After today’s revelations from the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and the documental evidence they have examined, I’m finding it a little hard to work out exactly how I feel about it all.  Angry. Shocked. Saddened. Relieved. All of these, and yet none of them, seem adequate. Today was an end in one sense, and a beginning in another.

The Truth

For twenty-three years, the families of the ninety-six victims of Hillsborough have been lied to. The victims themselves have been lied *about*. And in this sense, “victims” refers not just to the 96, but to those present on that day who suffered through the trauma of the tragedy, and have had to live with it ever since.

These lies, they said, were peddled and perpetuated by a triumvirate of the South Yorkshire Police, the government, and certain media outlets.  These lies, they said, were created in order to cover up gross incompetence and lay it firmly at the feet of the football supporters – whom the police viewed as little more than troublesome hooligans at large in those days. These lies, they said, were presented as “The Truth” by media outlets with an agenda, and a distinct lack of moral decency.

And today, Prime Minister David Cameron said this:

“The families were right.”

Imagine it was you. Your loved ones went out one sunny morning to enjoy something they have spent their life being passionate about. Something they’ve gone to enjoy time and again. But on this day, they never return. They are killed in a tragedy that nobody saw coming, yet could so easily have been prevented.  Then imagine you spend the next 23 years being told that it was their fault, despite knowing otherwise. Imagine having to face this lie from media outlets, from governments, and from ignorant or spiteful members of the public. For TWENTY THREE YEARS. 

Would you “give up”? Would you “move on?” That is what the families of the 96, and all who supported their fight for truth & justice, were told.  Finally, their dedication has shown some signs of vindication.

Any sense of relief I have is for them; that people know now that their fight was not in vain.  Something they themselves knew all along.  

The senses of shock, sadness and anger come from the extent of the revelations in the Panel’s report.  164 police statements were deliberately amended – 116 of which had serious negative comments about their own organisation removed entirely.  The original ruling of a 3.15pm cut-off point for medical evidence was proven to be, as suspected, entirely unjustified.  How can something like this have happened in a supposedly civilised country, only 23 years ago?

Support

What has encouraged me is the support we have seen today from outsiders. From those who have not, perhaps, previously understood the full extent of the lies and the cover-up. This tragedy is not about football support, but about life & death, and families losing their loved ones. To illustrate this point though, I must turn to the football aspect.

Football is a tribal beast by its very nature. It’s not a side of the sport I particularly like, but that’s irrelevant. The support shown today from all quarters of the football world show that, by and large, people are able to put rivalries aside in the face of greater issues.  In particular I have seen support from the closest rivals of Liverpool Football Club. With Everton, you would almost expect it since it has affected many families of Blues supporters just as much as Reds. 

I have, however, seen support come in from many Manchester United supporters as well. To those people I say thank you. Thank you for understanding that this could have been any club, such were the conditions of stadia and attitudes towards football supporters in those days. Thank you for understanding that some things quite simply transcend the barriers we place between ourselves and label “rivalry”.

And this is of course without mentioning support from many other clubs, domestic and foreign. Thank you all.

As much as I would like to bypass the following on this day, I feel that these issues cannot be addressed without talking about the aforementioned media outlets.

The Sun

Several newspapers in the wake of Hillsborough published stories which were either exaggerated, embellished or simply outright lies.  Most of them, upon learning of their error, or the inaccuracy of their sources, retracted the stories and/or issued full apologies.

The Sun did not.

Under the leadership of a vile and despicable piece of pondlife by the name of Kelvin MacKenzie, The Sun went with an article headlined “The Truth” and went on to print hurtful lies about the actions of Liverpool supporters in the ground that day.  

Go back to imagining this was you.  Imagine reading that your deceased loved ones were accused of picking the pockets of the dead, or urinating on police officers, or beating up police officers who were trying to resuscitate victims. 

Read that all again. The Sun actually published those accusations as “The Truth”.  

Today, we know what The Truth really is. Today, the Panel released its report which told us, as David Cameron said, that the fault really lay with the safety of the crowds having been “compromised at every level.”  Media websites across the country were reporting this, and letting everybody know what had really happened that day in 1989. 

The Sun? Of course, no mention at all of it. Instead, they ran with a completely unrelated celebrity story, whose headline was “Shut up and move on.” They knew exactly what they were doing with that, and further cemented their place as the most vile rag unfortunate enough to litter our newsstands. 

The Liverpool supporters’ boycott of The Sun is not “banter.” It is not “a Scouse thing.” Both of these statements, I have heard first-hand.  It is not something to be joked about. Today, more than ever before, is proof of that. 

I would like to think that in light of today’s revelations, people who never previously understood either the boycott itself, or the fight for truth and justice, may now realise what it has all been about.

Oh and a note to Kelvin MacKenzie – your half-arsed apology is 23 years too late, and I for one do not accept it. You said in 2006 that you “were not sorry then and are not sorry now”, so what’s changed? Oh yes, that’s right, you’ve been caught out for the filthy lying scumbag that you really are.

Justice

So now that The Truth has been made common knowledge, that particular fight has ended in a modicum of victory. No true victory can be achieved of course, because what was done can never be undone.  But another fight continues, that being the one for justice.

Perhaps, with the fight for truth won, and the facts now solidly supporting it, a campaign for justice can really gather pace.  

The families of the 96 never ever gave up on the truth. Their stoicism finally paid off.  I would hope now that their struggle for justice is more readily understood and supported than it has been before.

The Truth. At last.

Liverpool go to Wembley - but it could have been so different

The date: 13 October 2010. Somewhere in a courtroom in Texas, Tom Hicks obtains a restraining order preventing the sale of Liverpool FC to New England Sports Ventures.

For Reds fans everywhere it was just the latest twist in a saga that dragged the name of the club through legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic. The debt-heavy ownership of Hicks and George Gillett looked to continue and potentially take Liverpool Football Club into administration; which given their poor on-field displays under Roy Hodgson could have legitimately meant a relegation battle would be on the cards.

4 days later (after the sale), Liverpool would lose 2-0 to Everton which left the Reds second to bottom in the league table. Liverpool FC had not looked weaker for many a long year. Improvements over the next couple of months were rare, and there was no better example of Liverpool's plight than the 0-1 home defeat to Wolves on 29 December. Looking lost, disorganised and lacking ambition, Liverpool meekly shuffled off the Anfield turf having looked the inferior side to a club who were bottom of the league before the match.

The fans voiced their opinions, and it was this game that was the straw which broke the camel's back. Until this point I had held out hope that Hodgson, a decent manager, could turn things around. But that hope had been taking a beating, and finally it broke with this defeat. It was evident that Hodgson, even with the dark cloud of Hicks & Gillett gone, was not the man for the job at Anfield.

Fans asked questions. Where would it end? Liverpool were 12th in the table, and not looking like a team that deserved to be higher. There were nervous glances into the past, at clubs such as Leeds and Newcastle - who many said were "too big" to go out of the Premier League at the respective times. Were Liverpool next?

On 8 January 2011, everything changed.

NESV saw the decline of their new club, and acted. They removed Roy Hodgson from his post, and did not have to look far for a replacement. Kenny Dalglish, at the time a club ambassador and a former player, manager and legend at the club, was asked to step in. Dalglish was not only available, but his love for the club ensured he would take the reigns without hesitation. Indeed, he cut short a holiday to take the job.

Dalglish brought in his own staff, including Steve Clarke, and went about making changes to the team. It took a couple of games for Kenny to find his feet, but with a 3-0 win at Wolves, things started to click. There was no finer example of Kenny's impact than a win at Stamford Bridge on 6 February. Having bought Liverpool's prized striker Fernando Torres for £50m, Chelsea were huge favourites to win the match. The day belonged to the Reds though, as Raul Meireles struck and Torres sat with a muted look on his face from the bench.

Over the course of the season, Dalglish steered the Reds to a seventh-placed finish, missing out on 6th (and Europa League football) only via a final-day defeat at Aston Villa. Kenny earned himself a chance at having the job full-time which had duly been confirmed a couple of weeks earlier.

Kenny re-shaped the team over the summer of 2011, bringing in several Premier League-experienced players such as Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson, Jose Enrique and Craig Bellamy.

And whilst the league campaign has been hit-and-miss, Liverpool remain only 4 points outside a Champions League place. But more importantly, Kenny Dalglish has paid the domestic cup competitions a lot of respect - and is now reaping the benefits.

Tomorrow, Liverpool will play the new Wembley Stadium for the first time, against Cardiff City to contest the Carling Cup Final. They haven't done it the easy way either, having had all away ties up to the two-legged semi-final, including trips to Stoke and Chelsea. In said semi-final, the Reds knocked out Premier League leaders Manchester City.

But the fact that Liverpool are even at Wembley, contesting a trophy, is a perfect illustration of how times have changed for the better at Anfield over the past year or so.

Around 18 months ago, Liverpool fans wondered if they would even have a club to support. Think about that. Imagine if it was your club - facing an uncertain future under a diabolical ownership. If your club was having to go to the High Court just for the right to be sold.

Amongst all the talk of the trophy "kickstarting the season", or being a "distraction from other issues", the most important thing is that we as football fans still have our club intact. What the future holds we can only speculate, and it starts tomorrow with a cup final to be played.

But when Liverpool fans watch Steven Gerrard lead their team out at Wembley, I'm sure more than a couple will look back and breathe a huge sigh of relief that it didn't turn out, as it could have, so differently.

Come on, Liverpool!