England must remain patient
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What a very disappointing performance! Like most of the world watching the game on Friday I was shocked at how badly England played. The team seemed to be unable to get going and looked uncomfortable on the ball for long periods. At times when they moved into the final third of the field they seemed to run out of ideas. They are a set of highly talented individuals but none of them seem to be working for each other.
The key areas where I thought they failed were in their passing and tackling. When defending the ball we never seemed to want to impose ourselves on the ball and winning it back, there were too many flicks at the ball and not enough strong tackles being made. I think at times our crossing was poor, the team need to make it count in the final third and they struggled with this, especially on Friday.
There were some positives to be taken from the game. I thought David James commanded his area very well, he took several decent catches and I would almost certainly think he will be in the starting eleven for Wednesday’s crunch game against Slovenia. There was a moment when he came out too far and there was some uncertainty between him and Jamie Carragher but the Liverpool defender kicked the ball into row Z and got rid of the danger, David needs to remain vigilant at all times and I’m sure he could be an important player for us in the rest of the competition, should we progress.
I look back to both World Cups in 1986 and 1990 and we began both very slowly and received no end of criticism in the early stages. This current campaign reminds me very much of both of those tournaments and I believe that England will look to Wednesday with optimism and draw on how they performed to get to this tournament. France had a torrid time in the early stages in Germany in 2006 but they raised their game and came within a penalty miss of winning the World Cup, what I am trying to say is that we must remain patient and get behind the team as they more than anyone will want to make sure this is a successful World Cup.
If England remain focused and patient I am sure we will all see a better performance and more importantly a win on Wednesday!
Former England goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, is an ambassador forBritish Airways - the official airline of the England 2018 World Cup Bid.
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