Offside Ref

Macedonia is the kind of place that if you can get away from with the 3 points it’s enough.  I said it wouldn’t be pretty and it wasn’t. I said there wouldn’t be many goals and there weren’t. I also said England would be solid and on a few occasions they were found wanting.

Ultimately these are the games you need to win, when you don’t play well and you have a hostile crowd, I think any other team in the group if offered a 1-nil win would take it since Macedonia will take points off some teams in Skopje. I think in England’s next game, again against Macedonia, we will see England take the fight to them a bit more since it’s a home game.

Three games, three wins and ten goals, results count so anyone who is going to moan about McClaren has serious problems.  My biggest worry is Lampard who for large periods of the game was anonymous; it was the same in the game against Andorra where I totally forgot he was even playing.

So England lead Group E on 6 points with the real danger teams in the group, Croatia and Russia having a game in hand over England.

With England’s first competitive game against the minnows Andorra out of the way, the side face the possible stumbling block that is Macedonia.  While they are unlikely to win they have proven in the past that they can take points. Should that happen McClaren’s honeymoon will be over.

Being an away game with a hostile crowd England won’t want to push to far up or take to many chances but I full expect them to put in a solid performance that takes all 3 points, just don’t expect it to be overly pretty or with tons of goals.

The England that beat Greece 4-0 in a friendly yesterday was a completely different team than the one that turned up to the World Cup, the personnel were more or less the same but it was like a team reborn. 

So has McClaren cast off the shadow that hung over him after being associated with the previous management? Well, it certainly didn’t hurt him that they won 4-0 and very convincingly too. I think now most are prepared to give him there support although some won’t be convinced, until they win a competitive game and others still until they take on a big side (Holland v England, 15 November, Friendly).

While Greece isn’t the strongest side in the world, it was only 2 years ago that they won Euro 2004, they had at least seven of the side that won Euro 2004 in the team last night, admittedly the team is getting on a bit but you can only beat what’s in front of you.

After the World Cup I think a lot of people’s belief in football in general and in the national side had taken a knock (me included).  Now I’m actually looking forward to the next game against Andorra, I can’t remember the last time I felt that.

When Steve McClaren was appointed as the next England manager by the Football Association before the World Cup, I doubt he thought he would have to disassociate himself from the previous manager by so much.

During the World Cup we watched as Sven sat there appearing to do nothing, occasionally talking to McClaren. McClaren would write something and show it to Sven and would then go and issue some orders. People begun to question who was really running the show. England crashed out of the World Cup having not put a single convincing performance in.

McClaren took over at the beginning of August and appears desperate to prove that his tenure will be his own and different to that of his predecessor. The first sign of this was when PR Guru Max Clifford was hired to be his PR advisor having previously advised him when he came clean with his extra-marital activities. Ultimately the fans view on him will come down to two things, match results and how convincing the team is and you just can’t spin that stuff.

So far he has had to made two football decisions:

• Pick the new team captain, this was a no brainer he had two excellent choices in Gerrard and Terry. Support for both from the general public was slightly in Terry’s favour and even those who wanted Gerrard believed that Terry was also a good choice and vice-versa.

• Pick the squad, this required common sense, something that Sven appeared to lack during the World Cup, and it looks like McClaren made the right decisions. Gone are Sol Campbell, David Beckham and David James and in comes some new blood. Demoted (and rightly so) to the U-21’s is Theo Walcott who I feel sorry for since he came to sum up the end of Sven’s reign and yet it wasn’t Theo’s fault that he was picked to be in the squad that he wasn’t ready to join.

In addition to these decisions he has made some backroom changes including the very popular appointment of Terry Venables as his deputy.

McClaren needs some wins quick and convincing wins too or his honeymoon period will stop before it starts. I think the crunch game for him will probably be the 2nd game, a Euro 2008 Qualifier against Andorra on the 2nd of September. Andorra is a very young football nation and McClaren has been promising convincing results, failing to deliver a win by a margin of at least 2 or 3 goals probably won’t bring calls for his head but will result in a huge knock to popular support for him.

On Wednesday England face Greece in a Friendly that couldn’t come at a worse time. The league managers want to keep their players and get them ready for the start of the season, they don’t want their players playing in a meaningless friendly that could get them injured. McClaren on the other hand wants to get the team playing in a way that he wants them and ready for the more meaningful games ahead.

So McClaren finds himself in a catch 22 situation in that he has to find a way to look convincing against Greece while attempting to bed in some players and find a formation, all while keeping the league managers happy and not injuring their players. It’s certainly a job that I don’t envy.