Stuart Pearce.

[DoomMerchant]

well, here's the thing...odder things have happened, but i just have a gut feeling about this.

SP will manage England at the Euros.
England will win the Euros against all odds.
On the back of that, SP will get the England job for a miserable, sad, barely-qualified run up to and through the next WC where England will underperform in Brasil and have a shock exit. England fans will have taken their big fat white bellies to Brasil for nothing and they'll be angry.

You heard it here first.

Also, no plushies have been harmed in the making of this post.

cheers

[Tesl]

Regardless of who is the manager, England has pretty much no chance of winning the Euros. The squad simply isn't good enough and hasn't been for years. I'm sick to death of hearing the media and the majority of public going on about how we have all these amazing players when we don't.

On our day, we can get together a very good first 11, but there is no depth in the squad, so when the usual injuries come up, poor players get into the side.

Spain can pick from Casillas, Reina or Valdes to start in goal. We can pick from Joe Hart and erm...that's it. Fortunately, Joe Hart is excellent but it's absurd to think there isn't one other good English goalkeeper. At the last World Cup, Silva and Fabregas were back-up midfielders for Spain. Our back-up midfielder is Michael Carrick.

I know I've gone to extremes there by using Spain as an example but too many people in England believe we should be considered in the same category as sides like Spain, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina. You only need to look back at our record in tournaments to see we're not in the same league as those sides. Realistically, our level is probably closer to sides like Croatia, Russia, USA. That's what our results and generally performances show.

I will watch Euro 2012 and of course I would like England to do well. But my bigger concern is making sure our City players do not get injured and are ready to come back fit to defend our title in August.

100% correct. I'm happy to see Pearce get the job, since I don't think it makes much difference who gets it anyway. The squad now is about as weak as I've ever seen it too. Although at least GK position is finally fixed.

[Im_Spartacus]

You know what, despite what I have said earlier on this thread against SP, Pearce can not ever turn out a side as bad as Capello did against Algeria.

Interesting thought above about us being in the same cateogiry as Croatia, Russia, USA.......Just looking back over tournaments since we reached the Semis of the world cup in 1990 amazing how many teams we could consider "lesser lights" have equalled or bettered our performances.

Unfancied Semi Finalists Since 1992
EC 1992, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark
WC 1994, Sweden, Bulgaria
EC 1996, Czech Republic, England
WC 1998, Croatia
EC 2000, Portugal, Netherlands
WC 2002, South Korea, Turkey
EC 2004, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Czech Republic
WC 2006, Portugal
EC 2008, Turkey, Russia
WC 2010, Uruguay, Netherlands

I don't see how somehow we manage to still feel that we are superior to the likes of Turkey, Netherlands, Portugal. When it comes to major tournaments, I make it at least 7 nations out of the list above with a better tournament pedigree than ours over the last 20 years, not including the obvious, Germany, Italy, Brazil, France and latterly Spain.

We are pretty much equal in underachievement with the Argentina who are absolute shitters when it comes to tournaments, not having gone past the quarter finals since 1990 much the same as England, and usually going out in the 2nd round.

It was without doubt poor managerial decisions which cost us in 2002, 2010, and other than that, it has usually been some petulant munich cunt that has caused us the biggest problems.

So there is the answer, no more munichs. Ever.