[Archived] Mclaren

[Esulx]

I think the general concensus will be "NO!!!!"

[3rdpillar]

The youth structure is a joke; the U-15 coaches find the biggest kids in England who can play a bit, arrange games against Brazil, beat them through kicking lumps out of them, then proclaim that we have a bright future.

404886[/snapback]

Couldnt agree more! Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but, I was a very footballer who matured at 16 /17 and not 12 /13.

Everyone i played against in secondary school seemed like a man. when it comes to town team etc.....you dont stand a chance.

Even now in Sunday league, you see very few skills and lots of brute force and athletisim, we dont learn.

take that to the lower divisions, and what do you see..not much better than sunday league.

Is it the same on the continant or south america ???

[frosty]

Sigh

His first game is greece home on 12 august.

[des]

for me the person should of been big sam

people say he play the long ball gamem however if you look at his games play there play both the short ball and long ball, and his outlook his very up to date with training etc.

however while I hope the new manager does a good job, its a bad choice, a good coach does not always make a good manager.

[Esulx]

Ray Harford is a prime example... include in that Tony Parkes too.

Big Sam has done a decent job with players who nobody wanted and some who were coming to the end of their careers. Can you imagine what he could do with a team of very skillful players... and Peter Crouch!!!

[LeChuck]

Why are people so angry about this appointment? I can see how he is the FA's first (maybe second) choice.

I'm delighted we haven't appointed a foreign coach, I see no reason why we should do that. Why exactly would Scolari have been better? Winning the World Cup with the best team in the world wasn't exactly a masterstroke, he did well with Portugal at Euro 2004 but was it less than you would expect from a talented host nation? People still throw the 1-0 Brazil game at Eriksson when criticising him...I'm pretty sure those same people would be lambasting Scolari had we failed to break down that Greek side in the final.

Back to McClaren (at least spell his name right), he's far better than Big Sam when it comes to the England job. Boro's style of play fits much better with the players available to England, Big Sam's horrible football has finally cost him something. He's shown he can vary his tactics depending on opposition, and the recent UEFA Cup run has proved he can change during the game as well, something which Eriksson has been, quite rightly, accused of not being able to do.

On top of that he's done more for the English national side than anything other Premiership manager this season, fielding seven youth players at one point a few weeks back. What has Big Sam been doing in that time? The fact that McClaren has shown he isn't affraid to drop big-name players in favour of the young English players can only bode well for us, maybe we'll see less of the 'favouritism' that Eriksson is so often accused of.

Alright...he's not perfect, yet no candidate was. The negative reaction to this appointment is unbelievable. If Rovers had appointed a new manager there's no way these sort of comments would have come out, they would have been along the lines of "give him a chance" etc etc, but because it's the FA doing it people feel the need to rip them to pieces.

One final point...people are complaining that he's built his reputation with Boro being a 'cup team'. Remind me...which league is it England play in again?

[rover6]

League performances reveal the true talents of a manager.

Middlesbrough have a plethora of hugely paid multi-talented international players as well as arguably the best crop of youngsters in the land.

Where are they in the league?

I say it again, McClaren is better than Sven, but we're splitting hairs. Sam Allardyce has done more on a much lower budget and deserved the job ahead of Sven Mk II.

Edited May 4, 2006 by rover6

[thenodrog]

I cannot remember ever being as incredulous in my life. Anybody can see that the man is a DEMOTIVATOR with no redeeming talents whatsoever. This is not a safe appointment it is international suicide.

Good Points

1. It'll be sh1t but not for long! Barwick and Maclaren will not see 2 years in their respective posts. But it will almost certainly flerk up Euro 98 first.

2. The FA will not get all that sh1t ever again from press, media and pundits about appointing Englishmen.

3. The fall out will be that FA may well be knocked from their ivory towers and dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Wembley, Ericson and now this! WTF can they ever get right?

Bad Points

1. Maclaren is far worse and less capable of managing and motivating footballers than Graham Taylor ever knew how to be! But he and his family surely do not deserve the unrelenting scorn and criticism that he is now certainly lined up for. It will certainly destroy him as a manager but it could easily destroy him as a person, and his family life too! I always feel sympathy for Turkeys 10 days before Christmas.

2. Gibsons out of a hole. I suspect he must have had some influence here! I suspect Gartside wanted mega compensation whilst Gibson would have waived anything at all. Unless Maclarens teams domestic performance this season improved by next October Gibbo would surely have seen him sacked.

3. Boro have been strengthened, Bolton have not been weakened. Boro will be a greater threat whoever manages them. Bolton will be the same so now we are looking at a tougher fixture list already.

4. The world and his wife will be laughing at our ineptitude.

Word of advice do not go to watch England and do not buy a scrap of merchandise of any sort. The FA have chosen to ignore the fans completely so now it's trime for us to ignore them! What a sad day and a shambles.

[philipl]

The delight and relief of the Boro fans at this appointment is all that needs to be said.

[den]

Under McLaren, 'Boro have been for years the most boring, negative team in the Prem. One forward, pack the midfield and hope to catch teams on the break - and this at home games - and after spending £54m.

The ONLY reason for appointing him, is the lack of anyone else competing for the post.

[AlanK]

Pretty uninspiring really but I hope he proves the doubters wrong. Only time will tell.

Good luck to the guy.

[EIEIEIO]

Boro must be rubbing their hands with glee. I laughed when he signed a new 4 year contract with them a couple of months ago. But, they have the last laugh. They get shut of a crap manager and compensated for it. Watch Boro's attendances rise back to normal and their league position too.

I'm so disappointed with this appointment that I almost feel like I've lost interest in the world cup. This really is a joke and just goes to show that a month's worth of decent form has proved more valuble that a lifetime of football management achievement.

The FA truely are a bunch of self obsessed, weak minded, lazy clowns and I feel like writing in to tell them as much.

[blue/white]

He's being put forward as the sacrificial lamb for all the England must have an English manager whatever their actual qualifications. So when he fails the FA can then go and get themselves a decent foreign manager who might actually do something good.

What are the odds England is seeking another Mgr. come next Euro?

[RovertheHill]

Why are people so angry about this appointment?  I can see how he is the FA's first (maybe second) choice.

I'm delighted we haven't appointed a foreign coach, I see no reason why we should do that.  Why exactly would Scolari have been better?  Winning the World Cup with the best team in the world wasn't exactly a masterstroke, he did well with Portugal at Euro 2004 but was it less than you would expect from a talented host nation?  People still throw the 1-0 Brazil game at Eriksson when criticising him...I'm pretty sure those same people would be lambasting Scolari had we failed to break down that Greek side in the final.

Back to McClaren (at least spell his name right), he's far better than Big Sam when it comes to the England job.  Boro's style of play fits much better with the players available to England, Big Sam's horrible football has finally cost him something.  He's shown he can vary his tactics depending on opposition, and the recent UEFA Cup run has proved he can change during the game as well, something which Eriksson has been, quite rightly, accused of not being able to do.

On top of that he's done more for the English national side than anything other Premiership manager this season, fielding seven youth players at one point a few weeks back.  What has Big Sam been doing in that time?  The fact that McClaren has shown he isn't affraid to drop big-name players in favour of the young English players can only bode well for us, maybe we'll see less of the 'favouritism' that Eriksson is so often accused of.

Alright...he's not perfect, yet no candidate was.  The negative reaction to this appointment is unbelievable.  If Rovers had appointed a new manager there's no way these sort of comments would have come out, they would have been along the lines of "give him a chance" etc etc, but because it's the FA doing it people feel the need to rip them to pieces. 

One final point...people are complaining that he's built his reputation with Boro being a 'cup team'.  Remind me...which league is it England play in again?

404982[/snapback]

Oh dear. The reason people don't like this appointment is because McClaren isn't good enough. His track record is poor. His team have finished something like 12th, 11th, 11th, 7th and depending upon results this weekend 12th to 15th. He's won the WC (against Bolton). You ask what Big Sam has done - well he's finished 16th, 17th, 8th, 6th and probably 8th. Not much better until you factor in the £50m + spent (and I don't like Big Sam either).

Yakubu, Hasselbaink and Viduka are 3 exciting strikers, coupled with Downing, Mendieta and until last season Zenden, and still they are deadly dull.

As for varying tactics, they appear to be remarkably consistent in the UEFA cup - play so badly you go 3 goals down until professional pride and a nothing-to-lose attitude takes over and then release the attacking potential your side undoubtedly possess by throwing everything forward. That's not tactics - that's desperation.

Frankly it's "Turnip" time all over again...

[RevidgeBlue]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this will destabalise this World Cup bid?

I'm not a Sven fan, but I'm almost left feeling sorry for him. His authority has been completely undermined. He's going to be on the touchline with his supposed assistant, the next manager, sat next to him? How does that work? Why should the players take a blind bit of notice of Sven anymore ? What if he and McClaren have a difference of opinion on tactics for a particular match?

If we have a great World Cup McClaren will get all the credit. If we bomb without trace, McClaren is damaged goods even before he starts.

If it wasn't so serious you'd laugh. I suspect this farcial situation has arisen because the FA never originally thought they'd have to give McClaren the job.

[Blue blood]

So let's get this straight - two decent cup runs, and a league cup now qualifies a manager for what should be one of the most prestigious jobs in the footballing world. And such success came at a huge cost to boot. I'm sorry but even Souness' record is better than McLaren's - and he spent less in achieving it.

Clearly McLaren isn't the best manager for the job be the criteria requiring the manager to be english, british or from anywhere in the world. The appointment is a joke. This is the England Manager job we are talking about - not the barcodes. When has striving for mediocracy been an aim for England? The English job should go to a proven top manager and no one can say McLaren is that - distinctly average at best.

Have to say my enthusiasm towards english football has dimmed somewhat on hearing this news. Still as people point out he won't be in the job for long.

[RovertheHill]

Have to say my enthusiasm towards english football has dimmed somewhat on hearing this news. Still as people point out he won't be in the job for long.

405013[/snapback]

Exactly what happened after Italia 90 when they made the wrong appointment then...

[joey_big_nose]

Well I have to say out of the main eight candiates (O'Neil, Hiddink, Scolari, Allardyce, Curbishley and McClaren) he was my last choice. And I would have gone for Jewell, Pearce, Jol or Hughes ahead of him too (although I am obviously glad they didn't take a gander at Mark).

I think comparisons with Taylor are unfair however, Taylor was a one dimensional long ball merchant, and Steve seems a little more sophisticated than that.

I suppose the one big point of consolaton is that none of the candidates stood out and opinion was so divided that really it was going to be like this to an extent no matter who got the job.

Steve, I'm begging you, suprise us!

[Hasta]

Any chance of turning into a poll like the Hughes thread using the same choices.

Yes - He was my first choice

Yes

Undecided

No

Angry

I wanted Grooby

[modes98]

I was hoping for so much more from this process, all we have now is a continuation of the previous style which is never any good.

Scolari stood out for me as the man who could have taken us forward, although it would have frustrated me i would even have been happier with fat sam.

[BlueMonday]

I fear a barren spell looming for the England team. Very depressing.

My only hope is that he makes Stuart Pearce his Number 2, then at least we'll have someone with passion in there.

Such a shame we let Martin O' Neal slip through the net.

Edited May 4, 2006 by Azuri

[RovertheHill]

My comparisons with Graham Taylor are not about his managerial ability - simply about the scenario where we had the buzz about the England team after Italia 90 which was virtually extinguished by the appointment of Taylor, and totally very soon after! Same thing here IMHO - best group of players ever etc, real chance of winning something, and now everyone is downcast about the future.

[Anti Euro Smiths Fan]

The link below is six months old - but please read it, because the words in the article still ring true.

McClaren's not the man for England

A manager who says that he's "suspicious of entertaining football". That bodes well for filling the new Wembley then...

And as I previously mentioned on the original 'England Manager' thread, Middlesbrough's club captain Gareth Southgate told the Sunday Times in an interview recently that Steve McClaren is not the right man for the England job.

According to Southgate, McClaren is not ready for such a huge job - and Southgate should know McClaren's strengths and weaknesses, having worked with him over the last five years at Middlesbrough.

The FA have once again shown themselves to be bumbling fools. It's taken them months to come up with the name of McClaren, and yet ridiculously, Brian Barwick today told the media that McClaren was always his first choice and the unanimous first choice of the whole of the FA panel. Barwick tried to claim that Scolari was never offered the job and the only man he ever wanted was McClaren.

So why did we need this four month charade before McClaren was announced, if he was always the first choice of the FA?

This process has been a farce.

[Oklahoma]

People here mentioned the youth teams...

Here in Portugal, it all started in the eighties, when Carlos Queiroz was given the task of reformulating the youth department. And it worked. Still works today.

And it will improve in the near future, since many teams are finally having their own academies.

That's one thing that I find weird...

English teams have good academies and, yet, they don't seem to produce many quality players, like they should.

[Seggie]

What a Farce,

the FA have appointed the most tacticly inept and dullest man in English football. This season Boro have been one of the worst teams to watch in the premiership yet they give this dullard the England job. Yes, hes got said team to the UEFA cup final but said team rode their luck a lot and could not be consistent over 38 games.

From day one I have said Fat Sam is the man for the job, I believe even though he played carp football at bolton he would have cahnged it to suit the players we have as a country. He has merged a team of crap and decrepid players to become a force in England, Middlesboro are just crap and get lucky in the cups.

What worries me most is we will never have a crop of players like we have now again, so if we dont win anything between now and 20014 we will never win anything.