The World Cup Blog: England v Japan, The Negatives

Young Guns drummer Ben Joliiffe gives Rock Sound his honest appraisal of the England football team during their second World Cup warm up game against Japan!

Posted Tuesday, 1 June 2010 by Ben Jolliffe in

Blog

So watching the England game on my phone (I know, hi-tech right) at Slam Dunk over the weekend I picked out the following five negatives from the team's performance (if you want to call it that) against Japan...

The negatives...

1. Goals
Firstly, yes we won, but we didn't score one goal. Japan scored the lot, and we couldn't even score a penalty. We weren't convincing throughout the whole game and we never looked determined to win.

2. The Squad
The fringe players didn’t do enough to secure a final 23 position. With the exception of maybe Joe Cole who I thought had a fairly good game, the likes of Huddlestone, Wright-Phillips and Bent didn’t do enough to guarantee themselves a spot in the squad.

3. The Defence
The back four were uneasy. It wasn’t until the second half when Jamie Carragher came on when they started to strengthen up. Terry and Ferdinand have played enough games together to have a good partnership at the back but they haven’t been convincing. They did however improve but it definitely needs to be stepped up before the World Cup starts.

4. The Line-Up
By this point you would hope we had a good idea as to who's in the main starting 11 but I think we'll be going into the World Cup with areas that lack solid and consistent players. I think we need strong wingers and between Wright-Phillips, Walcott and Johnson there weren't any stand out performances worthy of a first team place.

5. Rooney
Wayne Rooney’s our biggest hope for the World Cup but he once again didn't impress. He's a great player and has massive potential to be great in the World Cup but the only thing he did yesterday was moan like an angry pubescent teenager!