Who from the Golden Generation should have been dropped?

JSArsenal

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This has been debated to death. Gerrard & Lampard didn't work, no one wanted to do the donkey work in midfield, Scholes should have been used more. etc.

But who should have been left out for balance, and who should have played instead?

Forgive me for beating a dead horse but I just watched this

 
JSArsenal said:
This has been debated to death. Gerrard & Lampard didn't work, no one wanted to do the donkey work in midfield, Scholes should have been used more. etc.

But who should have been left out for balance, and who should have played instead?

Forgive me for beating a dead horse but I just watched this

Click to expand...


Carrick should have been in with Scholes. Lampard as a rotation or sub for Scholes and then Gerrard on the left. Not the 'jazzy' lineup though and there would been uproar at their first bad game.
 
Gerard, jack of all trades, specialist in none. Lampard, specialist in timing runs forward, scoring. Scholes, passing/tempo specialist. Should have played 3 in the middle. Lamps, Scholes + A DM . Gerrard being impact sub.
 
In my opinion it should have been.

Scholes DM(Hargreaves or Carrick?)
Beckham Lampard Owen
Rooney
​
That would have been way more balanced and probably England would have gone further in the tournaments
 
When you put the careers and achievements of Scholes, Lampard, Carrick, Hargreaves and Gerrard next to each other, one of them is not like the other.

That shows you which should've been dropped. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, chances are it's a slippery, underachieving duck.
 
-------------------------James------------------
----------------Neville---Terry--Rio----------
Beckham ---Scholes--Hargreaves----A.Cole
---------------------------Gerrard------------------
-----------------Rooney-------Owen---------
 
2004 - should have stuck with the diamond, or dropped Lampard.

2006:

Rooney - Crouch
A. Cole - Lampard - Gerrard - Beckham
Hargreaves
Terry - Rio - Carragher​

(J.Cole, Defoe, Owen, SWP, Carrick, Neville, Campbell alternative options)

2008/10

Similiar to above, but Carrick starting DM, a few options for RWB such as Johnson, Milner, SWP, Hargreaves, Barry could have come in at DM or LCB, probably Defoe or Walcott should have partnered Rooney, with Crouch as an alternative. Diamond would have been another option. 2010 was the biggest disappointment, I expected Capello to work something out and he just decided to play 442 with Heskey upfront, at a time when almost all top clubs in PL were playing some 433 or 4231 variant, with Gerrard and Lampard on top form for their clubs as an attacking CM in a 3 or as a number 10.

Easy in hindsight, wasn't a popular formation back then especially in the PL. But it's the formation that would have worked best. We never really had the wide forwards to play a 433.
 
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James
Rio Terry King
Beckham Scholes Hargreaves Cole
Lampard
Rooney Owen​

I think if England fielded a team like that with someone like Hoddle, they'd of won something. Thankfully, being a scotsman they never quite figured it out/never worked out. :smirk::lol:
 
That JJ Bull used to put out some pretty shoddy quality but funny cartoons on YouTube back in the day, no idea he worked for Tifo/The Athletic, good for him. This is the only video I have seen of his at Tifo, but he seems to be a funnier guy than he is a good person to discuss football tactics.

I do like when he talked about the Spanish team though and mentioned that you can't just play central midfielders, when that's exactly how they won at Euro 2012 after David Villa couldn't play because of an injury.

People selecting Scholes to replace Gerrard are obviously doing so with a lot of bias, as Scholes himself admitted after he retired from international football that he struggled playing in an England shirt. Also, I kind of feel as if people are remembering Scholes and his role as it was post-(circa)2006 and applying it retroactively to earlier England teams. In retrospect it is easy to see one of Gerrard or Lampard needed to be dropped, but it would be tough to do so with an out of form Scholes playing in a team he struggled in, regardless of the position he was asked to play.
 
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England’s midfield looked best in the 2000s during the 2002 World Cup with Scholes and Butt. Should have kept Scholes in the middle with Hargreaves or Carrick.

but it would have taken serious balls to keep that after Lampard and Gerrard finished 2nd and 3rd in Ballon d’Or. Gerrard possibly could have fitted in for Scholes if he was off form. To be fair 2004 to 2006 was Scholes’s weakest period.

Lampard was an attacking midfielder who would be in the way of Rooney in a 4231, who was better.
 
Gerrard and Lampard were on the top of their game for their clubs at that time. I’m not sure how they’d get dropped for Scholes who had a rough patch around that time
 
Should play only 1 of scholes, lampard, or Gerrard. Scholes was getting on, he needed 2 players next to him to take the load off, lampard and Gerrard were just too slow and lacking technically. We had a really slow lumbering midfield with Gerrard and lampard, it struggled against top sides.
 
In My view 4-4-2 as a formation and the obbession with insisting every best player had to start I'm the XI, should have been ditched.

England could have used Beckham as a wingback and given the incredible strength at CB, Gerrard, Scholes and Lamparfd could have been used in center midfield, with Scholes best of the three postionalllly used as a deep lying play maker/holder. Allowing Gerrard and Lampard the freedom to play their natural games. With Gerrard being Pushed up higher up to play with Owen/Rooney, and a natural DM drafted in vs the toughest opponents.

It was simply maddening that balance was never really considered a priority until 2010 when the generation was on its last legs.
 
Worth noting that Scholes really came to life in the deep lying playmaker role in 2006, two years after he retired from international football I believe. His 2006-07 season was just sublime.

It's a tough call. Lampard was probably in the best international form in Euro 2004 so it would have been tricky to drop him.
 
Gerrard. Achieved the least, not defensively disciplined for a DM position, not enough attacking output when compared to Lampard, not as good a passer and tempo setter as Scholes. Obviously good enough for the bench.

Scholes Carrick/Hargreaves Lampard
Beckham Rooney Owen/Cole​
 
Main thing is they always found a way to play Sir Emile Heskey!
 
Lay said:
Gerrard and Lampard were on the top of their game for their clubs at that time. I’m not sure how they’d get dropped for Scholes who had a rough patch around that time
Click to expand...

Because you’re trying to build a functional team, not throwing all the well performing players into a side and hoping for the best. What if you had three strikers performing really well, would you start all of them? Team balance should take precedence
 
We should have changed from 4-4-2 to
4-3-3 and play all three.

———————D. James———————-

—Neville/Brown—Rio—-Terry—Cole-

—————-Butt/Hargreaves—————-

———-Scholes——Lampard ———

—-Beckham—-Rooney———Gerrard—


easy 1 WC and 1 Euro finalist/winner
You can also think of it as a United-ish right side and a Chelsea-ish left side for ease of interplay.
 
Gerrard would have been better suited to the current England side which is much weaker in midfield and needs carrying (which admittedly does sounds mad given where they've got to in the recent tournaments but I think favourable draws helped them overachieve).

With a strong midfield like then he'd have been better utilised as an impact sub.
 
I would have left out more than 1. At least in midfield.

I dont think England had a good enough DM to do the defensive work for Scholes + Lampard or something. But the balance was 100% the problem. Putting players who were best in attack in the midfield and then saying they'll take turns to defend. It was silly.

Trying to think about who all the options were at the current time and how good they were.... I would have chosen between Scholes as your playmaker, or Lampard as your goalscoring midfielder starting further up and left the other on the bench to change it, whilst giving them the defensive solidarity next to them that they had in their club sides.

And then Gerrard would either be off the bench to change it, or used in attack from a wider area where he could run the ball and shoot.

I never rated Hargreaves that highly, other than his spirited running for England while we were otherwise crap in a tournament. But depending on who else was available if I was playing a 4-3-3 he might be in there alongside another more defensive player than Scholes/Lampard to provide the balance. If Carrick was in his final Spurs years/United years then I'd have had Carrick, Hargreaves and Scholes or Lampard in a 3, or Carrick + Scholes or Lampard in a 4-4-2, but almost certainly Scholes over Lampard there because Lampard was playing in a 4-3-3 in his club side and playing further forward and its not the same thing. Whereas Scholes and Carrick as we saw, had a good balance
 
I always thought Gerard could have been crowbarred into RB - he had a good cross and tackle on him
 
2006

-------------------Robinson--------------------------
Neville----Ferdinand--------Terry-------Cole
----------------------Hargreaves------------------
-------Gerrard-------------------Lampard
Beckham-------------------------------J.Cole---
----------------------Rooney------------------------


Lampard more of an attacking midfield like he was for Chelsea.
 
That left wing was a big problem as much as the Gerrard/Lampard problem

Joe Cole was the best of a bad bunch but he was hardly electric but Beckham had to be Right wing so we were stuck with 442.

Maybe Beckham was the problem because he was such a golden boy the team revolved around him, but i always like the idea of Beckham playing the Pirlo role
 
Scholes should've been dropped, England never had the manager to use him, they didn't even deserve him.
 
kouroux said:
The issue was wanting to play with 2 strikers up top.
Click to expand...

4-4-2 was everything to English football during a lot of this period, any move away was normally met with fierce criticism from fans and pundits, pretty sure I remember we chanted 442 at Fergie when he started playing RVN up top alone.

Looking at the squad, a modern 433 or 4231 would have suited it far better. Even Beckham on the left with this new inverted wingers might have been a masterstroke
 
I think we can all agree 2 attacking midfielders in a 2 man midfield is suicide.
 
I think the most effective player to bring off the bench of the trio would have been Gerrard so I'd have dropped him.
 
diarm said:
When you put the careers and achievements of Scholes, Lampard, Carrick, Hargreaves and Gerrard next to each other, one of them is not like the other.

That shows you which should've been dropped. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, chances are it's a slippery, underachieving duck.
Click to expand...
Hargreaves is a duck?
 
kouroux said:
The issue was wanting to play with 2 strikers up top.
Click to expand...

Beckham was the elephant in the room, the 442 suited him the most and he played the best so managers were reluctant to change it. One time they played Beckham in deep central midfield and he just kept failing with Hollywood passes and they lost to Northern Ireland. Beckham would have been maybe 5th best centre midfielder and he didn't have enough pace, especially later in his career, to play right wing in a 433. So if Beckham had to play, then it was 442.
 
I thought Capello had the right idea with Gerrard left and Lampard cm, just unfortunate the rest of the team was rubbish by that point
 
I think that's the wrong question. It wasn't about who needed to be dropped but about which shape needed to be. In the mid-2000s English football was beginning to and would go on to dominate Europe with Chelsea/United mostly playing 4-3-3, Arsenal's 4-2-3-1 and Liverpool's 4-4-1-1 that morphed into a 4-2-3-1 later in the decade. Lampard and Gerrard excelled in those systems. Scholes went off the boil but would find his niche again within a 4-3-3. Mourinho, Ferguson and Benitez all recognised that 4-4-2 was old hat and the 3rd central midfielder was essential to be competitive at the top end of the game. Eriksson only went down that route after Owen's injury in 2006 when he tried 4-5-1 which was very solid and difficult to break down. But it offered little going forward so the inevitable knockout-stage outcome against a good side was a 0-0 draw and penalties. What killed it was that it was clearly a 4-5-1 rather than a 4-3-3 as there was little pace on the flanks and no real out-balls. Gerrard would have been an obvious line-breaking and out-ball option with his pace and attacking thrust, but was typically used centrally.

It needed a creative solution, one that was perhaps outwith the gift of Eriksson's traditional Anglo/Scandinavian 4-4-2 orientated mindset. His persistence with 4-4-2 didn't make much sense in enabling his best players to deliver their best game. His dalliance with a 4-4-2 diamond around 2003/04 was undoubtedly the most fluid and threatening England looked through the entire decade. That shape allowed more control of the middle of the park, and with a designated holder enabled the attacking midfielders to overload and break the lines in the final third. All it required was one of the four to hold (Gerrard did it brilliantly in 2001 against Germany, while Scholes or Beckham could have attempted a Pirlo-esque role) - or to ditch the one in poorest form and play a proper holder (eg Hargreaves, Carrick).

There were other options on the table too. England had great depth at centre-half, not much at left-midfield, and therefore could have used a 3-5-2 along the lines of:

King - Ferdinand - Terry
Beckham - Scholes - Gerrard - Cole
Lampard
Owen - Rooney

As well as not being quite innovative to get with the 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 trend of the 2000s, one of the problems was arguably Eriksson didn't have the strength of personality to make unpopular tactical choices. For example, he could have made Beckham play wing-back or even right-back, he could have kept Gerrard as the holder, or tried Scholes there, but with all of these options it was unlikely he'd persist with it in the face of media meltdown. ,
 
Gerrard and Lampard were hugely overrated. Never great midfielders let alone playmakers. Leave the out completely and England would have been multiple world and European champs.
 
Trequarista10 said:
2004 - should have stuck with the diamond, or dropped Lampard.

2006:

Rooney - Crouch
A. Cole - Lampard - Gerrard - Beckham
Hargreaves
Terry - Rio - Carragher​

(J.Cole, Defoe, Owen, SWP, Carrick, Neville, Campbell alternative options)

2008/10

Similiar to above, but Carrick starting DM, a few options for RWB such as Johnson, Milner, SWP, Hargreaves, Barry could have come in at DM or LCB, probably Defoe or Walcott should have partnered Rooney, with Crouch as an alternative. Diamond would have been another option. 2010 was the biggest disappointment, I expected Capello to work something out and he just decided to play 442 with Heskey upfront, at a time when almost all top clubs in PL were playing some 433 or 4231 variant, with Gerrard and Lampard on top form for their clubs as an attacking CM in a 3 or as a number 10.

Easy in hindsight, wasn't a popular formation back then especially in the PL. But it's the formation that would have worked best. We never really had the wide forwards to play a 433.
Click to expand...
Was Hargreaves fit in 2006 to contribute? I recall his last two seasons at Bayern marred with injuries.
 
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