So yes, England beat Andorra by 3 goals (should we be ashamed?), and now we can watch the rest of the Premiership season in peace without fretting over bad England performances.
Match Stats
Group E: Andorra 0-3 England
Date: Wednesday 28 March
Venue: Olympic Stadium, Barcelona
The goals were scored by Gerrard (2) and Nugent, all in the second half.
Match Verdict
Here’s what I know:
- England were expected to blow Andorra away 10-0, and anything less is considered a failure. I think that’s unfair.
- Andorrans fell back to hard challenges and trying to get under the skins of our players, and were successful in that regard.
- Lampard’s absence meant nothing. England’s 3 match-winners – Beckham, Joe Cole, Owen – are out injured and with Rooney off the boil there’s only Gerrard who can win games for England. It doesn’t really matter if Lamps there or not if England keep playing the way the played yesterday
And that’s that. Here’s a link to a proper match report (BBC Sport). England’s next two Euro 2008 qualification matches are away games to Andorra (2nd June) and Estonia (6th June). Should be fun…
Match Videos
The Goals
Andorra 0 – 1 England – Gerrard Goal
Uploaded by FootballHeaven
Andorra 0 – 2 England – Gerrard Goal
Uploaded by FootballHeaven
Andorra 0 – 3 England – Nugent Goal
Uploaded by FootballHeaven
All updates before the game
Latest England News
Frank Lampard broke his wrist in training (a Wayne Rooney shot that hit his hand) and is out of the starting XI. His absence means that plenty of England fans will finally get a chance to see England play a balanced team – the best team – instead of an imbalanced best XI.
England will win, but the manner of their victory will be key.
You can catch the minute-by-minute play for England vs Andorra on Guardian, where Rob Smyth is covering the game.
Expected England Starting Lineup
Ashley Cole should be back for this game. England will be have Micah Richards is fit as well, so this means that we finally 2 proper fullbacks playing instead of a hodge-podge defence like we had in the Israel game.
With Lampard out Gerrard should move to central midfield, allowing Lennon to shift to the right and Downing to start on the left.
Paul Robinson
Micah Richards, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole
Aaron Lennon, Steven Gerrard, Owen Hargreaves, Stewart Downing
Wayne Rooney, Andy Johnson
Earlier News
Richard Williams – proof that even good authors can make stupid mistakes – claims that the people’s choice last season (Sam Allardyce) would be a better fit as England manager.
There’s nothing wrong with that idea, except that the ‘people’ had unanimously ridiculed Big Sam’s methods of self-pimping even before he had been called for an interview. Personally I think that Sam Allardyce might do a better job than Macca (‘might’ being the operative word), but to call him the people’s choice? Surely you mean Hiddink or Scolari or even O’Neill, Richard.
If you read the news on Tuesday morning, you’d have thought that Steve McClaren was about to be crucified regardless of whether England beat Andorra tomorrow or not.
Terry Venables doesn’t have his back. The FA are going to string McClaren up and bring him in for questioning – apparently they are regretting not having chosen Sam Allardyce (HAH!) in the first place.
However, all of this is idle speculation. That’s not to say that it’s not possible, but there are so many assumptions, so much reliance on fabricated stories pushed as facts, that my gut instinct is to say that it’s bullshit.
Alan Hansen for gets it right AND wrong in his inimitable way, pointing out astutely that the players are the ones to blame but then inexplicably absolving McClaren of any responsibility for picking that damned team in the first place.
McClaren / England Tactics
Andorra are not pushovers (not for England’s style of play, at least), and McClaren will have to be careful on how he approaches the game. There’s a danger though, that England will completely outplay Andorra but not apply the killer touch early enough, making the qualifier more ‘worrying’ than it should be.
Will England improve under McClaren? You could argue that they have no where to go but up. I disagree though – sideways as always a good bet where England is concerned, and I expect England to make a meal out of this fixture as well.
Andorra vs England Prediction
England should win this – they must win this!
They’ll win this one easy.
you’re being too harsh. England will win this one.
BTW, isn’t the game being played in Espanyol’s stadium? Not Camp Nou as you said…
I thought it was at Barcelona? And No disrespect but andorra can hardly kick a ball, england will win this easily.
It IS Barcelona.
Fun fact – Andorra managed to score a goal against Israel in Tel Aviv 🙂
Didn’t Macca say something along the lines of “Hargreeves is the glue that holds the team together”? So dropping (if that is what will happen) could be seen as a rather silly idea? I know it isn’t really going to matter tonight who the midfield pairing is but it begs the question whats he going to do when we play Russia and Croatia? Back to the same kind of line-up we saw against Isreal or will he realise balance and putting the best TEAM out and not the best 11 individual players is the way forward? I wont hold my breath.
Although we will win tonight I can see summit farcical happening like going in at half-time 0-0. The win is the most important thing by far but you have to say if we dont win by 3 more questions will get asked.
If we all had to pick two players who performed resaonably well against Israel – Hargreaves and Carragher would come out near the top.
To drop these two tells you where McClaren is coming from. It looks like certain players (Lampard, Gerrard) cannot be dropped and it tells you a lot about the manager.
One is that if you play well don’t necessarily expect to stay in the side.
An Andorra win will mean nothing – anything less than a win and McClaren will be gone.
Andorra are ranked number 163 and England number 6 in the latest FIFA rankings.
Andorra are ranked number 163 and England number 6 in the latest FIFA rankings.
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If you take the way both teams are playing of late only one of those rankings seems fair.
Well if Ahmed is right, then you can already anticipate Macca’s substitutions, Carragher for Richards, Hargreaves for Lennon (pushing Gerrard to his usual right side) and Defoe for Johnson. I predict the Hargreaves/Lennon substitution will probably happen when they’re two goals up meaning they can’t lose and if it does happen Macca will use it to justify having Gerrard on the left. It really doesn’t work for me and just because Andorra are a weak side doesn’t mean that you can use them as a bashing post to justify poor team selections and try to hold your job longer. England should not be judged on the result of this game because unless they get less than 3 points it tells us nothing of the England team, just that the Andorran’s aren’t that great at football. I honestly hope England don’t win this one, just because as soon as they thrash a weak side the fans’ll be screaming ‘We’re the Champions’ and it’ll all go to their heads. So Please Macca, Prove Me Wrong!
I reckon we’ll win this one, it will be enough to stave the wolves from McClarens door for a bit.
Did you know that you can fit the population of Andorra into Wembley!! That includes their women and kids. That means if you look at how many elgiable men between 18-35 they have – it is less then 25,000.
This means this is a lose – lose game for england. If we win – well it was just against Andorra. If we draw or lose – then something is seriously wrong with the England team.
All teams in our group will beat Andorra – so this is a pointless game and really Andorra should not be allowed in these qualifiers. Of course England will win this game – the question is how many goals do they need to score or how well do they have to play in order to get the fans and media back on their side?
I for one am not concerned about not qualifying – we still have to play the russians and croats at home and we should win those matches.
My team selction would be (for all games):
Robinson
Richards, Terry, Ferdinand, A.Cole
SWP/ Lennon, Gerrard, Lampard, J.cole/ Downing
Rooney, Crouch/ johnson
Good luck lads and score a lot of goals to keep the media off your back!!
The odds on 0-0 at half time were fantastic, so I think it’s worth a bet 🙂
BREAKING NEWS – LAMPARD IS OUT 😀 😀
TrueBlue – well said and let’s hope they win easily.
Would you not have Hargreaves or Owen in your side?
I think that Hargreaves and Gerrard are the best central mid-fielders – we’ll see how they play today.
Thanks Hugo.
Should be interesting to see England now. Too bad I wont be able to see it on TV, but Rob Smyth over at the Guardian should do a good job on the MBM.
Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…… its 0-0 so far!!!!!
Heh
Half-time, 0-0. I’m off man, can’t bear more of this 🙂
Someone post the full-time score plus brief details in the comments here, I’ll update tomorrow morning.
Full time score’s 3-0 but it still feels like a defeat. England is just so over rated at this moment.
I guess whoever betted on a 0-0 halftime score made a lot of money. I wonder what goes on in that dressing room during halftime. Despair? Angriness? Confusion?
Its kinda sad to suggest that a team like England need a “Match-winner” instead of relying on pure team work to achieve that goal.
Fans have every right to boo the team they themselves elevated to the level of gods…..