I think their natural instinct is to buck-pass. Look at Dave Whelan - his pedigree is mainly football, and how many coaches has he sacked in knee-jerk responses?DaveO posted:That was also mentioned on the BBC web site. I found it rather a strange thing to focus on! Apparently it showed the passion of the Croatians that that their coach didn't mind the rain while it said McLaren was lacking involvement or something like that.Cruncher posted:
If you want an insight into the mentality of football people, check out Sky News now.
According to one of their sports reporters, this is all Steve McLaren's fault because he was standing under an umbrella rather than running up and down the touchline.
Quite bizarre.
He was always going to be the fall guy umbrella or not!As always, instead of admitting a collective responsibility that they all share for allowing this situation to come about, they're going all out for a fall-guy.
Dave
But you're right, McLaren was never going to keep his job after last night's fiasco.
With regard to your overseas players point, I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, not everyone in the FA does. I watched the press conference this morning, and the guy with the embarrassingly obvious hair-dye job was quite defensive, basically saying that the most important thing in English football is the Premier League and that it's vital to keep it filled with stars, foreigners or not.
It seems they have an in-built resistance to grasping nettles at the FA. The first nettle should be the overseas players thing. And the second one - much as I hate to admit it - should be some kind of salary cap. It's not secret that I don't like RL's cap, but that's mainly because I feel that, being designed to peg all clubs back to the level of the lowest achievers, it's restrictive to the point where it rewards mediocrity. Surely in football they could devise something that merely restrained the unashamed greed of men who demand millions and millions merely for playing a sport they love?
On the strength of what I heard this morning, I don't expect either of these nettles to be grasped soon.