How The Crouch Stole Christmas

Despite their best efforts England could only manage a draw against the yellow peril that is Sweden. England allowed what is for the most part a mediocre team room to play in the second half after making Sweden look very average in the first session. Maybe England took their foot off the pedal a little... they only had to draw and apart from a five minute golden period in the second half Sweden never looked likely to actually beat England. Cole had a great game, the back four was fairly solid except from the brain freeze at the end which allowed Sweden the tie, it really should have been Robinson's ball, he really looked like a 26 year old on the play. The England midfield played allright, it wasn't really a midfield game what with eleven Englishmen on the field and half the Swedish team playing in the EPL, it kind of looked like a competitive football game you could catch on any given Saturday all over the playing fields of England. The Swedes tend to be pretty lucky against England, I think it might be a case of England never really taking the Swedes seriously which is easy to do considering they have never won a damn thing. As for my pet peave, the tall one is wasting someone elses air-space as far as I'm concerned. I think everyone was looking forward to Rooney and Owen and instead we got more of the inept Crouch on crutches show. The Swedes must have been very happy to see Owen go down so early, it pretty much gave the back four the night off, Crouch is so easy to mark and take out of a game that they never had to worry about penetration. You could almost see the England team make a concious effort to start taking long shots, Cole, Lampard even Rooney all joined the shoot from 30 yards club, I think they have no confidence in Crouch to either lay the ball off usefully or get a decent shot on goal, he was completely ineffectual in this game and Sven has to consider using someone else up front with Rooney or perhaps Owens injury is not as bad as it looked... here's hoping. If I have to watch Crouch through another 90 minutes I swear, my TV not make it through the game. Ecuador 0 - 3 Germany, I'm still not a believer as far as Germany goes but this was a nice result from a game I thought Germany might find very difficult. It seems a lot of the South American sides, Brazil withstanding, look great against inferior opposition only to be crushed by a competitive team. Germany are certainly competitive if just a tad young.