View from the armchair

“Why the hell has Roy Hodgson picked (insert the name of your disliked player of choice) to go to the Euros?” Make sure you take the piss of Roy’s speech impediment – because speech impediments are SO funny, aren’t they? – whilst you question the England’s manager’s qualifications to manage so much as a Sunday league side. “He hasn’t got a clue. He just picks his favourites – that’s why we never win anything.” Well, thanks for that.

You have to love armchair experts, don’t you? They – or should I say we? – always know far more about the game than those who have spent an entire lifetime being paid to play and to coach and to manage! Us fans, we are always there to criticise a manager’s tactics, even if have never so much have kicked a ball in anger. But then: this is what football fans are for.

It is a simple fact that those who attend matches are divided into a number of camps. There are those who are rubbish at football, so they watch it instead, and there are those who are too old to play football. At various times of my life, and especially now, I have fallen into both categories.

We all know that Hodgson will get criticism for picking Wayne Rooney for his squad. Rooney, you will know, doesn’t play well at tournaments, he has only just recovered from injury and, worst of all, he is past his prime. Anyway, he was never really world class. You just KNEW Hodgson would pick him. Well, of course he bloody would: Rooney is his captain, he is England’s all time top goalscorer, he is highly experienced and every other player in the squad will desperately want him to be there. Oh, and he was tremendous in the qualifiers when England won every single game. “Ah yes,” you reply, “but all the opposing teams were crap.” At which point I consider tearing my hair out, wondering what it will require for people to look on the bright side, to show a little optimism, to not be so fucking miserable. Look, we could be Scotland for Christ’s sake.

Okay, Rooney is probably not world class – world class means making the World XI for the clash against Mars and he wouldn’t, no Englishmen would – but he is international class. Like it or not, he is respected by his team mates and his opponents and is always picked by whoever happens to be his manager at the time. Does that not tell us something, just a little bit, about how important a player he actually is?

Jack Wilshere attracts the same negative vibes too, but look at the evidence: the moment he gets fit, Arsene Wenger picks him, despite the fact he is English. (Note the little dig at the Arsenal boss there?) Wenger may not win all that many league titles but his coaching ability is not disputed. Wilshere is one of the first names on his team sheet and so it is with Roy Hodgson. This does not mean these two experienced managers are right and us blokes on the terraces are wrong, but I don’t think we can simply dismiss their professional judgement in favour of our amateur judgement.

The list goes on. Jordan Henderson? Not good enough, which is why Jurgen Klopp always picks him, then. Or John Stones, who has resembled Bambi on Ice this season. Yes, yes – I am entering the same territory myself when saying that Roberto Martinez, with his track record of managing teams who can’t defend, was a major reason why Stones turned to jelly. You see how easy it is?

There’s me, 25 years a parks player and a very poor one at that and I’ve got an opinion and opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one.

I am not sure I can be bothered to argue with everyone who disagrees with some or all of Roy’s squad, although I know I probably will. I also know that I am beginning to go down the usual England road of being quite pleased with the potential of this squad and, you know what, that Spain, they’re not as good as they were and the Netherlands aren’t even there. It could be our year, it really could be, although you know in your heart that it really won’t be!

I expect I shall soon be joining everyone else by criticising the manager for being “clueless” and “tactically inept” if something goes wrong. It’s what us football fans do, it’s why we’re there. We don’t really know more about football than Roy Hodgson but logic goes out of the window when we’re fans. We know best, you see. Or not.