But this is far and away the worst starting 11 I've borne witness to in 40 odd years of watching them.
You obviously didn't watch them when Turnip Taylor was in charge. Andy sinton, keith curle, neil Webb, Tony daly, Nigel Clough, alan Smith and carlton Palmer, to name but a few.
I've watched every game as long as I remember but the difference is that at the time, some of those players were playing well in good footballing sides whereas now harry maguire is donning the beautiful shirt
Now, maybe this is just me being bitter n twisted, but... Sam Allardyce was a popular choice as England manager but his reign was brought to a quick abrupt end for that 'sting' of proposing to accept cash...we all know the story. Rewind a few years to Southgate missing a vital shootout penalty, yet went onto cash in on it in that ridiculous Pizza Hut advert along with Waddle and Pearce. Is it just me, or is that worse than what Allardyce did? Cashed in on failure that he created. And now he's leading that very same team!!!
Although if we're wasting this game playing people who have no chance of playing in Russia then we may as well play harry maguire. He's not on his own in this situation but why waste this tactical opportunity? The bigger problem is that the dust farters in the fa will single handedly derail any progress with their old boys club attitude as "The perm" has pointed out. Clough, venables, redknapp, allardyce who knows whether theyd have worked out but it would have broken the mould a bit
Years ago fans complained that we had too many players to choose from now it is too few . It would have been interesting to see wot Big Sam could have achieved given a few years in charge .
I would suggest this is the legacy from 20+ years of daft money being pumped into the game. Young players happy to be sat on benches or loaned out are not making the progress they used to. Many of the players now playing came from teams like us who pushed these players onto better things or were outstanding for their parent clubs who saw their potential & did the work themselves.
