now, lets not get confused: i like me some peter crouch. he's one of the better technicians england possess in the final third, a thoughtful, dangerous striker who in should be well suited to the quick interchanges of rooney, gerrard and lampard. and as a further rejoinder, i am a big fabio capello fan: for all of the "i'm desperate not to overrate him in case we're all being fooled yet again" talk you see in the media, he really is by far and away the best coach england have possessed in quite some time.
yet capello's selection of crouch last night really hindered the rest of the team.
it is quite simple really, disturbingly so when you read nonsense like richard williams' in the guardian today, saying how well crouch suited england. the fact is that the way capello had set his side up required more than the gangly (note: i am required by the fa to use this adjective whenever describing p-crouch) striker could ever hope to provide. and this isn't really a criticism, but a statement of fact - what england required last night was mobility and incision, but that isn't crouch's game. the pompey man is an excellent predator, good linking attack and midfield, but doesn't have that muscular power that england required. and the side was all the poorer for it.
think about england last night - how they lined up and how ukraine attempted to stifle them. across midfield you had aaron lennon playing very wide, hugging the touchline, whilst on the other side you had steven gerrard playing slightly inside, looking to link with rooney, who had seemingly been given complete freedom of the park. (as an aside, this wouldn't be possible with beckham in the side as he too drifts inside, compressing the play and making it more difficult to retain possession.) now, this worked: ukraine pulled their left-back right out to cover lennon, and whilst the spurs man was only intermittantly effective, his pace means that he cannot be left open. this stretched ukraine, often leaving big channels between their left-sided defenders; with tymoschuk drawn to his right by the danger of rooney and gerrard, there was often acres of space down inside lennon.
this is where crouch needed to be - attacking the defender nearest lennon, exploiting the space afforded to him by the countless attacking options presented by england, drawing more attention away from the gerrard-rooney axis - but he wasn't. largely, he was a bit lost - not quite on the same wavelength the rest of the attack, getting slightly in the way, staying too central. he was even largely bereft of touch, too often conceding the ball when challenging to hold it up and distribute.
instead, england would have benefitted from emile heskey, whose physicality allows him to exploit areas such as these, areas that aren't so easy for crouch to reach with any frequency. as such, england struggled to keep the ball as easily as they should've done, with attacks regularly breaking down as ukraine kept plenty of men behind the ball. this was compounded even further with the introduction of beckham, further reducing england's options in possession and making the side almost wholely reliant on rooney to create. in fairness to the united man, he was phenomenal, a genuine threat whenever he gathered the ball, and produced three of the very best passes you will see this, pinging the ball from left to right as he looked for the isolated lennon.
of course, this isn't a massive problem for england - the fact is that strikers will return and crouch will be reduced to cameo appearances. but it is nevertheless indicative of how capello's system is developing, and just how much tactics (what a shock!) and good management can transform a side. which may come as news to all the idiots that beg for michael owen and simple 4-4-2.
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