Despite not being able to hit the proverbial bovine rear end with the kid from Deliverance’s musical instrument of choice in an England shirt for the past year, “Podgy” Frank Lampard has came up with the best tactical decision yet in a week of “will he, won’t he” discussions over the merits of 442, 352, 532, 54321s and Trios (although the last two were just in Frank’s lunchbox).

The Chelsea man’s great ploy to get the most out of a star studded but underperforming England midfield is to set two defensive holding players deep and allow one midfielder to abandon all of those boring defensive duties and run around the opposition half waiting for the ball tocome to him 30 yards out so he can have a wild swing at it and then not have to trot back and help mop up the pressure in his own half. Sounds like a hell of a job for one lucky England midfielder doesn’t it and I bet you’ll never guess just who Frank has in mind to step into the breach and take one for the team in that role tonight? Or maybe you will.

I look at the England setup now and realise that although the names change, the underlying problems remain the same. Steve McLaren may have taken the hard step of removing former idol David Beckham from the squad but in his place he’s planted Frank Lampard who now enjoys just as much of a cult of England team celebrity as Beckham once did. Lampard is undroppable so we are told but his very presence completely negates the benefit of including England’s only truly world class midfielder in Steven Gerrard who finds himself completely wasted, either as a stop gap on either side of midfield or crowded out in the middle as “big” Frank takes up all of his runs and positions.

Lampard himself surely realises this and in a not so subtle display of “look at me boss” he’s now set himself up to become the focal point of a system that doesn’t play to the England team’s strengths as a whole and instead is built to facilitate the inclusion of one player in particular. There may be a certain haircut addict in Madrid watching the England game on TV tonight wondering just how it was so wrong for him to get that kind of special attention but so right for Chelsea’s own version of the Three Lions Primadonna.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 9:31 am and is filed under International Football - England. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.