Sam Allardyce suggested yesterday that he may be tempted to contact John Terry about a return to the national team.
As much as I rate John Terry, I am perplexed as to why Big Sam would need to call on the Chelsea skipper.
I know England haven’t been the most solid defensive unit over the last few years, however, to re-introduce a member of that generation just undoes everything England has been trying to achieve over the last 2 years.
Big Sam, and the rest of the team at St Georges football centre, need to be implementing a plan which looks past the next two years of qualifiers.
John Terry will be 37 when the World Cup starts in 2018. When you consider that within the England set up we currently have two young, decent centre backs in Jon Stones & Chris Smalling, both of whom play every week in the Premier League, it seems foolish not be concentrating on their development as the main centre-back partnership for England over the next 10-15 years, rather than replacing them with a player who only has a year or so left in him.
I could understand John having some involvement around the England camp, the current squad do lack experience at international level and this did show throughout the Euros. Having JT in a mentoring role would be a really good thing for the likes of Stones and Smalling.
Although, John Terry has had a well documented difficult relationship with the people at the FA and it doesn’t seem plausible that John Terry and the FA could ever work coherently again.
Maybe Sam Allardyce feels that England needs a “John Terry” figure within the squad, or maybe he feels that the England defence isn’t currently up to the level required. Big Sam may be using John Terry as a pawn to encourage the current defenders to up their game. Whatever the reason for Big Sam referring to Terry’s inclusion, I hope he realises that we need to be looking forward and not backwards.
James Mahoney midtablefinish.com
@midtablefinish1
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