Why are the english fans so expectant and demanding?

At the end of every major footballing tournament all England fans seem to be disappointment and will find scapegoats and excuses for why yet again we failed to win a major international competition. Why are our expectations so high for a nation who have never held the number one ranking spot since the introduction of the system in 1992 and the highest ranking of 4th place be so expectant of success?

England's average ranking in the 19 years of this system being in place is 10th so a quarter final appearance on average should be classed as a success but yet when England crash out in the world cup at the quarter finals the national tabloids display discontent and disappointment with England and class it as a failure even though our ranking suggests that quarter finals is the stage we should be getting knocked out at.

One of the main reasons we are disappointed every major tournament is not our national teams performance but our traditional pre tournament national team big up claiming that we are going to win the world cup even though they are clearly better teams. To put this in comparison in premier league terms it is like before the start of the season Everton claiming they are going to win the league, there is no disputing Everton are a great team and have a chance but they are clearly a few better teams who stand a more likely chance of winning the league and everton fans do not expect to win the league so why should England fans expect to win?

Another reason why we are disappointed is that the whole nation manages to find scapegoats and excuses for the defeats which superficially knock us out which adds to the disappointment as we never as a nation admit that we were outclassed and deserved to go out. Even in the 2010 world cup when we were completely outclassed by Germany we still made excuses and blamed Rob Green for which was a huge error the whole failure of the world cup was placed on his shoulder which was wrong. People said it knocked England's confidence which it may have done but they are professionals and one mistake in the first game of the tournament should not affect the whole tournament

Maybe if we accepted our defeats rather than thinking what could have happened and blaming referees, cheating Argentinians, linesmen and penalty shootouts. The nations habit of making excuses just adds to the ignorance of us believing we are the best football team in the world and deserve to win every game when we unlike other western European countries which are the best football team in the world. If we admitted defeat maybe that would spur us on to make severe changes to improve our nations footballing system as it clearly is not working for whatever reason and making excuses makes it appear that we have been unlucky in tournaments which I'll admit we have been quite unlucky but every single winner of the world cup has deserved it and i don't think we have deserved to win a world cup

Another reason could be our geographical position in Europe. The most successful countries in the past 40 years in Europe are Italy, Germany, Holland,Spain and France which are all predominately in the centre of Europe but the country's which are on the outskirts of Europe such as England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Russia and other Baltic, Balkans, and former soviet countries all have been unsuccessful in international football. This can be all link to geographical reasons as due to the distance from the "core" of Europe leads to less information been spread regarding tactics, fitness, lifestyle and training which puts the out skirted countries further behind the core European countries as due to geographical reasons networking is easier for inner core European countries even with modern developments.

The only team to prove this thesis wrong is Greece at the 2004 Euro which the nationality of the coach was German which are a key member of the core European group and therefore maybe having an Italian managing England is such a good thing just like having a swede (who spent managerial time in Italy) as this will bring about the Italian knowledge and more networking into England which could only benefit England.

Another underlining reason is the amount of English players in the premier league and perhaps more importantly the lack of English players playing abroad. With most industries foreign imports (which in football represent foreign players) benefit the economy (premier league) as it makes the economy quality improve due to improvement in efficiency which benefits the premier league money wise but does not improve the national game and therefore it may not be possible to have the most successful and best league in the world which the premier league claims and proves to be and the best national team in the world which the English fans claim to have but fail to prove. 

If more English players were playing abroad they may be able to learn more skills and techniques which are associated with those leagues as similar with another economic reference a way to improve a certain industry you learn on the job which in football is playing and therefore playing in different countries and leagues would surely benefit the English players. 

So is the reasons why we all feel disappointed at the end of a major tournament all because of bad luck and a poor performance or are they even more deeper issues built into English football that are uncontrollable and should we just accept that we wont be successful and world cups and maybe hope for more achievable goals so that we don't feel disappointed, discontent, angry, gutted and many other feelings whenever England are knocked out of a major international competition

The only success England have ever and perhaps will ever achieve

Martin Jol a good choice?

It was announced tuesday morning that Martin Jol would take over as the Fulham manager only 11 months after turning down the opportunity to manage Fulham last July and the former Tottenham boss will take charge of his first Fulham game at the end of June where Fulham enter the Europa league via the fair play system.

Martin Jols playing career saw him play in Holland, Germany and England  and his managerial career also followed the same pattern as he has already managed in Holland, Germany and England and is set to return to England to his new role in south London.

In his time at Tottenham he achieved a fair amount of success finishing 5th twice in a row and just missing out on a champions league place due to his Tottenham squad being struck down by a sudden illness which prevented them from champions league qualification.

His time at Tottenham unfortuantly came to an end at the beginning of the 2007/2008 premierleague season when tottenham started off the campaign terribly when expectation were very high for that season due to the amount of money spent and Tottenham were highly tipped for champions league qualification. His time at Tottenham also ended with him having less control in the transfer market which undermined his position as manager.

Hopefully in his time at Fulham he will be given full support from the backroom and total control over all transfers and maybe with this he will prove to be a success at Fulham. However it depends what you would class a success for Martin Jol at Fulham would be and more importantly what do the Fulham board expect from Martin Jol.

Mohamed Al Fayed the Fulham chairman on Tuesday spoke about the appointment and stated that

He understands my vision for the club, and believes in what we are striving to achieve here. I know that he will dedicate himself to helping us move forward, and is with us for the long term, to help us build and progress

from this statement we can speculate that Jol is expected to maintain Fulham's top 10 finish and build on the success to take Fulham forward to the next level. Hopefully he will be given time to achieve this and may potentially play more attractive football which Martin Jol brought about at his reign at Tottenham.

At the current time of writing this Chris Hughton is rumoured to become his number two which would be another great addition for Fulham as Chris Hughton is an established Assistant manager and also had a successful spell as a full time manager at Newcastle United earlier this season.

So the big question is will Martin Jol be successful at Fulham?

Martin Jol at Craven Cottage during his time at Spurs

Englands Summer Fatigue Problem

After another abysmal England performance yesterday it got me thinking why when it comes to the summer are England hugely disappointing. In the interviews after the Switzerland game Fabio Capellos excuse for the abysmal England performance yesterday was

"We missed those chances but I can see that in the last 10 minutes some players were without energy."

After this excuse i got thinking what are the main reasons for this fatigue problem we seem to always have at this stage of the season and is this one of the main reasons why we have so many disastrous major tournament campaigns as up until June we seem to be world beaters and when it comes to big tournaments we seem to fail to pieces and maybe the main reason is this fatigue problem which we could solve and perhaps have a better chance of winning a trophy of some sort.

In order to find a solution for this problem we have to compare ourselves to different European nations and how they go about there national teams to solve this problem as other nationalities have players who play similar amount of games as the England players but somehow are less tired. I think the main reason for debate is that the English premier league unlike most other foreign leagues does not have a winter break which is the first point i will look at.

The winter break debate is a big debate in football with most premier league managers backing for the premier league to adopt a similar winter break like most European countries adopt most notably La Liga, Serie A, Eredivise, Bundesliga and Ligue 1. A winter break in the premier league could help solve England's  fatigue problem and could help England perform better at major tournaments as currently in the Premier league there is a tiredness problem which maybe could be solved by a 2week break in  winter while of which in recent years weather has caused postponements anyway.

At the 2010 World Cup the big players who failed to impress mainly came from the premier league such as Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres failed to impress and the countries with numerous premier league players such as England, France, Ivory Coast and Nigeria all failed to impress whereas the countries with less premier league players performed admirably such as Spain, Germany, Uruguay and Argentina and players who were branded as premier league failures such as Diego Forlan performed admirably in the world cup so was this all because of the other leagues winter breaks or just a coincidence.Fernando Torres for example at the 2010 world cup was shocking whereas at the 2006 world cup while playing in a league with a winter break.

Or is there bigger issues with the premier league and is it a league which will come crushing down in a matter of years. Does the uncompetitiveness of the premier league add to the weaknesses in the English national team as the English internationals who play for the big clubs aren't challenged enough in the league and Wayne Rooney can be made to look world class against a team like Blackpool and Wigan (no disrespect to those teams) whereas against a bigger team abroad he is often gone missing.

Other factors causing fatigue at this stage of the season could also be that in England we have two additional Cup events (The FA Cup and The Carling Cup) which adds to the fixture congestion and maybe reduced fixtures in these events which would reduce the fatigue of many England internationals.

The premier league is also a very high intense league which is maybe completely different and is unsuited for international players to compete well in both club and international fixtures and major tournaments and perhaps a better idea might just to have a winter break in the years where a major international tournament occurred as the premier league chiefs obviously are set against the idea of a winter break.

Maybe another reason for yet another England performance is that we big ourselves up as world beaters when we clearly are not as well as the ignorance of most of our fans who had the attitude of if we cant beat Switzerland we don't deserve to qualify and who are clearly showing disrespect to a nation who was the only team to beat Spain at the 2010 world cup.

Whatever the reason for England fatigue problem it needs to be solved in order for England to have any chance of a successful tournament and the FA and the premier league need to investigate the main reasons for the problem and solve it immediately.