Can Darren Bent Be New Heskey?

A New F Plan
Although I was very impressed with England performance the other night I was a bit shocked to see Fabio attributing it to having a full ten days in which to impress his ideas on the players. It is not the first time an England coach has bemoaned the little time they get to interact with the squad but I can't for the life of me understand why this happens.

To the best of my knowledge a standard Premiership footballer's 'working day' is finished by about 1pm. For the kind of money the FA are paying Fabio, surely he could arrange to see some of the squad in the afternoons during the months between internationals!

Put it this way; The players of Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton to name a few of the North West clubs live a maximum of 40 minutes from each other (less if you drive like Barton). I can imagine it is not dissimilar for many London clubs. Why can the England manager arrange for established England players and promising talent from a particular region to meet up once a week for a few hours and talk about the team and his ideas? No one is asking them to do extra training (perish the thought!) but some time showing how he plans to play against future opponents, formations he will employ and the conduct and commitment he expects of the team leading up to selection seems to me like the perfect solution. José Mourinho is well known for spending as much time running through power point presentations with his staff and players as on the training pitch.

The benefit of this of course is that you will be educating potential future managers and coaches in the mindset of a proven winner and highly successful manager. The players will know well in advance what they will be doing if they are selected and have the way they are going to play in the back of their minds months in advance. If we are all honest there are only maybe two genuine world-class players in the England squad but we saw how effective they can be when playing in a balanced team who had a clear idea of their roles.

I really think we are missing out on a huge opportunity to improve the national team and the tactical education of our best players.
Dave F (Sky >>>> Setanta), Manchester

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