Good Enough? Martin Johnson thinks so.

Martin Johnson has now swung his World Cup axe and chopped off Riki Flutey’s head. I share in most people’s surprise in this as I expected him to make the squad. Here is my assessment of the squad Johnson thinks is good enough to win in New Zealand. If you like this article please re-tweet on Twitter or “Like” on Facebook to support. Please feel free to leave comments on either.

PROPS

Dan Cole – Highly rated in the scrum but needs to assert his physicality more in the loose. Warrants his place but competition is fierce for the front row spots.

Alex Corbisiero – Another very strong in the scrum. Will push Stevens, Cole and Sheridan hard for a starting place.

Andrew Sheridan – A man who’s name still sends a shiver down the spines of the Australian pack. Question marks over his fitness.

Matt Stevens – Served his drugs ban and appears to have come back even stronger. Cocaine clearly isn’t performance enhancing. First choice without a doubt and can play on either side of the scrum.

David Wilson – Who? Apologies to Bath fans. I can only assume we are taking 5 props as Sheridan may not last the tournament. I believe Wilson can play at loose or tight-head.

HOOKERS

Dylan Hartley – If he plays the way he did in the 6 Nations (particularly against the Welsh) he is nailed on for a starting place. Throwing has improved and he has an impressive work-rate. Perhaps we need to get Warren Gatland to wind him up before each game.

Lee Mears – Seems to have gone about his business quietly. Solid performer and I expect him to make an impact from the bench.

Steve Thompson – Any man who returns a half-a-million pound cheque in order to continue to play rugby gets my admiration. A key man in the squad on and off the pitch.

LOCKS

Louis Deacon – Solid player and strong in the lineout. Not quite powerful enough or mean enough for my liking but offers reliability.

Courtney Lawes – The “new” Martin Johnson? He has the potential. Great physicality and mobility for a man his size. Should be looking to assert himself as a mainstay of the England team.

Tom Palmer – Had an impressive 6 Nations championship. Has improved game by game. A strong candidate for a starting place.

Simon Shaw – Even at 38 the guy is still a quality player both in the tight and in the loose. This is not a sentimental pick by Johnson. Whichever club picks him up after the tournament (assuming he wants to carry on playing) will get an absolute bargain.

BACK ROW

Tom Croft – A hugely talented player who will be looking to re-discover the form he showed on the last Lions Tour. Fantastic work-rate and reading of the game. I’d put my money on him being quicker than Banahan too.

Nick Easter – I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. He is over-rated, slow and does not warrant his place either on talent or form. Picked on reputation, although where he got that from is a mystery to me. A player whose style is much more suited to the 80’s! Who would I take instead? Luke Narraway.

James Haskell – Playing in France has not done him any harm at all, however it remains to be seen how playing in Japan will develop him. A guy who should make much more of his speed and physicality than he does but one of the stand—out players from the 6 Nations. Watching a few DVD’s of Pierre Spies wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Lewis Moody – Another picked on reputation rather than form. Undoubtedly inspirational when playing and fully fit. But when was he last playing at 100%? I expect him to be rested for the Georgia, Romania and Scotland games.

Tom Wood – Very similar to Richard Hill in the fact he gets the hard work done without anybody really noticing. A relative novice at this level but developing rapidly. Expecting good things from him.

FULLBACKS & WINGS

Delon Armitage – His display against the Welsh at Twickenham will have put serious heat on Foden. Looks to be coming into some good form after his off-field indiscretions. Strong, quick, exciting runner and a decent tackler with the added bonus of being able to comfortably cover several positions. Worth a punt at outside centre?

Ben Foden – An all-round quality player. Superb strike runner and a constant attacking threat...when he is actually given the ball in space (Take note Flood!!). Another who could be considered for outside centre. Will be pushed hard by Armitage.

Chris Ashton – Has anyone actually attempted the try-scoring swallow dive? It’s bloody difficult!! The guy is a class finisher who is not content to just sit on his wing and wait for the ball, although with the centres inside him that’s not really a surprise. He will be closely watched by opposition defences in this tournament. I worry England are over-reliant on him to provide some creativity.

Mark Cueto – Nearing the end of his International career and seems to me to having been lacking a cutting edge for quite a while. I would have liked to have seen what Charlie Sharples could do or given James Simpson-Daniel an opportunity.

CENTRES

Matt Banahan – Included in the Centres section as it is the reason Johnson cited as having him in the squad. Equally as useless in either position in my opinion. If he scores the winning try in the final I still won’t change my view. Clear evidence of short-sightedness on Johnson’s part. Flutey is the better player, even with poor form, and should consider himself unlucky.

Shontayne Hape – Should have stuck to playing rugby league. No flair, no side-step, no pass, no ability to run a decent angle or ask questions of a defence. Not good enough. Better players  (Simpson-Daniel, Tait, Flutey etc) will be on their summer holidays wondering what they have to do to get in the England squad.

Mike Tindall – Should have retired....in 2003. Just because he is royalty doesn’t mean people aren’t allowed to tackle him! Should have gone on your honeymoon Mike! I wonder if he is now exempt from having to sing the National Anthem?

Manu Tuilagi – Trying to put my issues about his nationality aside, Tuilagi offers something none of the other England centres do....an attacking edge. I hope he gets the chance to show what he can do. Johnson should let him off the leash. I wonder if he knows the words to God Save the Queen?

FLY HALVES

Toby Flood – Decent in the 6 Nations and a reliable kicker but he seems to have lost the ability to control a game, put his backs into space or keep the scoreboard ticking over. Will only start the matches against the smaller nations as Wilkinson is rested.

Jonny Wilkinson – I don’t need to put much here. The guy is world class. Enough said.

SCRUM HALVES

Joe Simpson – With the injury to Danny Care, and Youngs only just coming back from injury Simpson has a good chance to stake a claim for the number 9 spot. Im sure he will get some game time. Be interested to see what he can offer.

Richard Wigglesworth – Another who will be pushing hard for the 9 shirt. The ability to cover at 10 if required cements his place in the squad. Perhaps lacks the zip and spark of the other two but offers a great service to his backs.

Ben Youngs – An undoubted talent and offers a great attacking option behind what should be a dominant pack. Will need to regain his match fitness and sharpness quickly in order to fight off the challenge from Simpson & Wigglesworth. If Care were fit I believe he would have been first choice ahead of Youngs.

We need an uninhibited performance so we can at least hit the world Cup with some optimisim. There is enough in the squad to cause the big boys some real problems, if used corerctly and allowed to play. It could  be better though. Bring on the Irish, I will be watching with interest.

If Plan A doesn't work, revert to Plan A.

Having watch England’s two World Cup warm-up games against the Welsh I am now seriously concerned that Martin Johnson will have enough players to make up a squad of 30 let alone whittle down from 40. There are so many players who do not warrant a place on the plane to New Zealand on the showing of these two matches I wonder if we would be even able to a fill a bench with guys who are good enough to wear the white/red/blue or black!

I do not subscribe to the assertion that they are only warm-up games. No game against the Welsh is ever “friendly” or just an exercise in going through the motions. These games should be treated as a prelude to the toughest rugby contest in the international game. We should have our tactics finely tuned already, or in England’s case on Saturday...we should have had a tactic other than run straight into the waiting Welsh defence.

I wasn’t expecting perfection. I was expecting a game plan and strength of execution. What I saw was the typical England of old. If plan A doesn’t work, revert to Plan A! I have rarely seen a side have so much ball, with so few options.  Far too often the first, second, third and fourth choice of option was to keep it in the forwards and hit the Welsh defensive line. The Welsh defended well, but they were rarely stretched. The England ball was so slow it gave the defence ample time to recover.

Once released to the backs Toby Flood failed to ignite his back line. It is hard to pin-point the reasons for this as he managed to do this adequately in this years Six Nations Championship, despite having the one-dimensional Mike Tindall and the utterly useless Shontayne Hape outside him. Neither centre justifies a place in the squad on form or talent.  The creative runners; Foden and Cueto were largely anonymous. Is this down to them not giving Flood the option or Flood not directing them to where he needed them to be?

As for Banahan, any man of his size who cannot plough through Shane Williams when you are five metres from the line does not deserve to play international rugby. I am also a firm believer that if you are used on the crash ball you should hit the line at full tilt with the express intention of smashing it has hard as you can. Banahan would appear on the end of many a woefully telegraphed move to stop just before the tacklers. I bet Jamie Roberts and Sam Warburton couldn’t believe their luck. Easy pickings. Too easy!

There are worrying concerns (for me) over a number of players. Ricky Flutey did nothing when he played at Twickenham, Ugo Monye doesn’t have the quality despite being picked for the Lions Tour of South Africa and Hendre Fourie has not impressed (and don’t get me started on his nationality). The only previously uncapped  players who may warrant selection are Tuilagi and Sharples. The others would have been given an opportunity to stake a claim if they had been good enough. Charlie Hodgson continues to look so nervous in an England shirt that he reminds me of a child made to do a PE lesson in his pants!

 I don’t rate Nick Easter. He is too slow and not dynamic enough. For his so-called leadership qualities, I saw no evidence of them on Saturday. When things are going wrong you need “captains all over the field” to use the cliché. Speaking of Captains, Lewis Moody shouldn’t be certain of a place given his level of performance in the Twickenham game. He charged about in the first 5 minutes, missed two tackles and then went off injured in the first few minutes of the second half. I admire his lead-by-example style of captaincy to a certain degree but I don’t think it will be good enough in NZ, if he is ever fit enough to play.

At the end of the 6 Nations I was cautiously optimistic that Johnson’s team were moving in the right direction and that we would have a good tilt at the World Cup. I am now concerned we have regressed and there will be some knee-jerk experimentation in an attempt to solve problems that should have previously been addressed. Failure to beat Argentina in our opening game is likely to lead to a quarter-final against the All Blacks. I don’t expect them to choke this time.

At least Johnson is safe in the knowledge there is nobody left at RFU HQ to sack him!

McLeish: Brave or Stupid?

When Alex McLeish came out a few weeks ago with the statement he would only be adding one more signing to that of Shay Given I was as concerned as the rest of the Villa faithful. With a raft of players being released and two of our best being sold our squad is looking a bit thin.

I am now wondering whether McLeish is playing a bit of a waiting game and saving some of his “war chest” for the January transfer window. This may give him the opportunity to buy someone to get him out of trouble if we are doing badly or help push on if we are doing well. There is no doubt that the arrival of Darren Bent in the last Jan window kept us from having a very sticky end to the season and would have eased the pressure on Houllier’s job should he have been fit enough to continue. Imagine Bent’s impact if we had been pushing for the top six!

Looking at our fixtures over the first half of the season we have a comparatively easy run in the first few months and then a bit of a nightmare December. In our first thirteen games we only play two of last years top six, Man City and Spurs. Even with the squad we have we should be looking at entering the December fixtures with a good haul of points and going into a tough run of games against Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea with some confidence. With a positive start in our earlier fixtures McLeish could be looking to the transfer window to boost the squad and kick on for a European spot.

Conversely, a poor start to the season followed by a run of fixtures against the top teams could leave us languishing in the bottom half of the table by Christmas. Is McLeish then likely to use his cash to try and save his a*se? Every team goes through a rough patch of the season. I think McLeish will have the fans on his back quicker than most if his team doesn’t perform. Football fans are fickle. We are allowed to be. We pay a lot of money to watch our teams. Is he taking a risk by not having a stronger squad from the start of the season or is he being clever enough to cover himself with a signing in January if he needs one?

I’m pleased to see that the players he has signed look like they are happy to be at Villa Park, although I know its a bit of a cliché to smile at the camera and say the right things in the press conference. I understand Given has taken a pay-cut to join us. And as he is not likely to be using us as a stepping-stone, that suggests to me a player who is going to give it 100%.

I watched Wolves’ new signing Roger Johnson (who has now been made their club captain) in his first interview. He looked like he would rather be at home on his Xbox than signing at Molineux. The guy couldn’t have looked less excited about his new club! At least he didn’t trot out the “Dream Move” line, or claim he was a boyhood fan of the club he was signing for!

Cue the Fabregas “Dream” move to Barcelona the Nasri “Dream” move to Man Utd/Man City/highest wage payer and the Tevez “Dream” move to anywhere that is away from Manchester and slightly nearer Argentina.