Apologies for the aftertiming, but what was McClaren playing at last night? I’m no expert on football, but yesterday’s game was the most important and high pressure game played in England for years – on occasions like this experience carries a lot of weight and youthful exuberance very little. I spent most of yesterday puzzling why Scott Carson was in the line up and David Beckham wasn’t, concluding in the evening that it was because the manager didn’t know his business.
I would normally be sticking up for the manager on a day like this, because in general I think we judge managers far too much on results and far too quickly, but in McClaren’s case I’ll make an exception as I’m reasonably confident that he hasn’t got what it takes. An England manager is a very different job to a club manager, and again age and experience should carry more weight than they would at club level. My man for the job would be big Phil Scolari, not everyone’s cup of tea but ticks the boxes for me.
Questions have to be asked of the directors, who again have unnecessarily given a pile of money to a manager who has only served out a small amount of his contracted time.
Ours runs tomorrow at Ascot – we are looking for proper improvement from last time at Chepstow.