England need a leader on the pitch to fire them up

While everyone from Andy Murray to Vernon Kay has their say on England’s World Cup woes, Graeme Le Saux, writing in the Telegraph, reckons the lack of a leader on the pitch for Fabio Capello’s team is the real reason for their problems.

For a team which boasts so many leaders and so much experience, so many players who bear tremendous responsibility for some of Europe’s best clubs on their shoulders, the most striking thing about England’s dismal draw with Algeria was the silence.

They looked a very quiet side. They were almost timid. No player seemed prepared to point a finger at a team-mate, to motivate, cajole or criticise.

Wayne Rooney spent much of the game shaking his head or throwing his arms up in the air, yet nobody seemed to demand more of him, to encourage him to improve his own performance.
All teams need players who the rest of the squad have to answer to should their performance not come up to scratch. Roy Keane was exactly that sort of leader, the player you would not want to face in the dressing room after a poor display. There is only so much a manager can do once a game has started, after all.

The players have to take responsibility for themselves and their team-mates, too. It is something that has been missing from the England team for quite some time. During the qualification process for the World Cup, it was masked by results, but it is when things are not going so well that these troubles come to the fore.

Why it should be is rather more difficult to pinpoint, but perhaps England’s players have too much respect for each other. Perhaps they are too chummy, too aware of each other’s superstar status. Perhaps they feel they cannot criticise such highly-regarded team-mates.

The best relationships, though, are those which are so strong that criticism can be offered, constructively, and no damage done. My approach was always to offer praise to my midfield player when warranted, and to rebuke him when needed. Such a technique never damaged my relationship with anyone.

There are other factors, too, to explain England’s failure so far. Fabio Capello must take some of the responsibility, of course, for his failure to take any risks with his line-up, for the tactical approach employed and for his failure to act effectively and dynamically to win a finely-poised match.

His substitution of Aaron Lennon for Shaun Wright-Phillips astonished me - it is a like-for-like switch, rather than an attempt to alter the tempo of the match - while his decision to bring on Jermain Defoe and Peter Crouch proved counter-productive. So many strikers simply clogged up the space on the pitch, making England less dangerous, not more.

It is easy to highlight all of these things after a couple of bad performances, of course, but at the same time there are questions that must be addressed, not least of which is the role of David Beckham on the bench during games.

It seems like a trivial issue, of course, but it is at times like this that questions are asked over those things which, otherwise, would not be an issue. By allowing David to sit on the bench as what appears to be a cheerleader-in-chief, Capello is providing ammunition for his critics.