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Great teams with a poor defence?


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2 hours ago, aRdja said:

Excellent centre half is pushing it IMHO. He was serviceable at best. I know NT caps ain’t everything but Mark Wright has more caps to his name than both Pallister and Bruce combined.
 

Yes @Sugar Ape, I read your excellent post regarding NT caps, but has to be be said 22 caps between May, Pallister and Bruce, to me, seems poor.

Pallister was a very good player and Bruce deserved to be capped for England at the least. May was dog shit though. 
 

Truth is they just had better players than them in their positions for the national team like Tony Adams and Des Walker. Though I’ll never understand how a 28 year old Keith Curle went with England to Euro 92. 
 

I don’t buy into people saying if we signed Pallister we would have won the league. Mark Wright was rated higher than Pallister when we signed him and was a better player in my opinion. We didn’t win the league when we signed him either.
 

Ferguson just knew how to set up a defence and get the best out of his defenders and Evans didn’t. You put Wright in that UTD side and Pallister in ours and nothing would have changed. They’d have still won the league and we’d have been also rans.

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2 hours ago, Kevin D said:

 

Puyol and Pique were good players, but that's not what makes a good defence. There has to be positioning, discipline and cohesion amongst the whole back 5/6 and there seldom was. There were bits of brilliance from Puyol/Pique occasionally, but just as often they were scrambling all over the place and left in 2 on 1's because Abidal had been skinned or Alves was 35 yards out of position.

 

This Liverpool team would eat them alive on the counter.

As others have said, if we could get the ball off them maybe.

 

They led their league in Goals Against by quite a wide margin every year Guardiola was there. A couple season by double digits, even the last year when they came second they conceeded the lowest.

They were hardly poor in defense.

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15 hours ago, Lee909 said:

For me, a lot of these national teams where overrated as they were not watched all that often. 

 

7 players of that starting 11 where not anywhere close to the quality of the other 4. That's what I mean about overrated. We have seen enough how having 4 players can often get you over the line but fail at the highest level. As I said Careca might have been enough to get them over line despite how poor elsewhere

Careca was not playing in 82 I think, you’re confused with 86. Brazil 82 was a wonderful team, which somehow managed to get beaten the Italian way. 

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30 minutes ago, Arnaud said:

Careca was not playing in 82 I think, you’re confused with 86. Brazil 82 was a wonderful team, which somehow managed to get beaten the Italian way. 

No Careca made his debut in 82. 

 

Careca first broke into the national side of Brazil during 1982, but was forced to miss the 1982 World Cup in Spain due to a thigh injury suffered in practice three days before Brazil's debut in that tournament.

 

He scored 5 in 11 games for Brazil in 83. 

 

 

The 82 Brazil team may have played some good football, but this was a shit era for free flowing football at International level. But a team with 7 bang average players isn't great. 

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7 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

Though I’ll never understand how a 28 year old Keith Curle went with England to Euro 92. 

Ah, mid-90s England!

After Italia 90 Graham Taylor inherited a team with two established right-backs in Paul Parker and Gary Stevens. He immediately decided that he didn’t rate either of them, and played Lee Dixon in every single competitive match up until Euro 92;  whereupon Dixon got injured before the squad could be finalised.

Through a mixture of injuries and bloody-mindedness, Taylor either couldn’t or wouldn’t instead pick Stevens, Parker, Rob Jones, Gary Charles, or Earl Barrett (the last three each given their debut over the preceding earlier). He did try to pick Mel Sterland (one cap from four years earlier - he got injured too and also couldn’t make the trip to Sweden). 

So instead Mr Taylor named as his first choice right-back... Keith Curle, a functional central defender with two caps to his name before the tournament kicked off. 
Surprisingly, the gambit of ‘Pick a very moderate player who has almost no international experience and play him out of position’ did not pay off. Over the next two games David Batty (an inexperienced central midfielder) and Andy Sinton (a moderately experienced left-winger) filled in at right-back instead. They were also underwhelming. And after that England found they had no more problems filling the right-back slot for the tournament, as they were on their way home. 

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Rob Jones was injured for Euro 92. 

It's mad I don't ever think of him as a player of that era, I know 92-96 isn't much later but always think of him as a mid 90s player. 

 

Such a fucking shame, should have been part of the Houllier team that did the treble, came 2nd in 02, could easily have still be around the squad in 05(hed have been 34). And Gary Neville wouldn't have half the international caps he did

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Hungary 1954 could be up there. I've only ever seen old Pathe news reels of that team playing England at Wembley, plus a bit at the 1954 World Cup. Going forward they were brilliant. I doubt their defenders were 'poor' as such, but the team was set up for all-out attack and still let in 3 against an England side they totally dominated. They got exposed by a reserve German XI in the World Cup group stage, and then by the first choice XI in the final after surrendering a 2-0 lead. Even there I might be doing the Hungarian defenders a disservice because it later emerged that the German players were pumped full of PEDs which impaired their health and fitness after the tournament.

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4 hours ago, Lee909 said:

Rob Jones was injured for Euro 92. 

It's mad I don't ever think of him as a player of that era, I know 92-96 isn't much later but always think of him as a mid 90s player. 

 

Such a fucking shame, should have been part of the Houllier team that did the treble, came 2nd in 02, could easily have still be around the squad in 05(hed have been 34). And Gary Neville wouldn't have half the international caps he did

Aye, Jones’s international career was over by 95 and you can’t really blame Venables/Hoddle for not wanting to put their trust in someone whose body was letting them down so regularly. I know that Redknapp gets mixed reviews around these parts but IMO the same goes for him. 

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5 hours ago, Ron B said:

Ah, mid-90s England!

After Italia 90 Graham Taylor inherited a team with two established right-backs in Paul Parker and Gary Stevens. He immediately decided that he didn’t rate either of them, and played Lee Dixon in every single competitive match up until Euro 92;  whereupon Dixon got injured before the squad could be finalised.

Through a mixture of injuries and bloody-mindedness, Taylor either couldn’t or wouldn’t instead pick Stevens, Parker, Rob Jones, Gary Charles, or Earl Barrett (the last three each given their debut over the preceding earlier). He did try to pick Mel Sterland (one cap from four years earlier - he got injured too and also couldn’t make the trip to Sweden). 

So instead Mr Taylor named as his first choice right-back... Keith Curle, a functional central defender with two caps to his name before the tournament kicked off. 
Surprisingly, the gambit of ‘Pick a very moderate player who has almost no international experience and play him out of position’ did not pay off. Over the next two games David Batty (an inexperienced central midfielder) and Andy Sinton (a moderately experienced left-winger) filled in at right-back instead. They were also underwhelming. And after that England found they had no more problems filling the right-back slot for the tournament, as they were on their way home. 

Euro 96 was the first tournament I watched from start to finish. England were very good I thought, and could easily have won it. Best England team I can remember for sure.

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43 minutes ago, Lee909 said:

England absolutely blew that tournament. It was wide open for them and they shit the bed. 

They were very good. Perfectly balanced. Macca and Anderton as wide players were terrific. Shearer and Sheringham up top, with Gazza schemeing behind them. Defence was solid too. I don’t think they ‘shat’ the bed as such. They were unlucky to lose against Germany. I have watched that game maybe five times since... and England were the better team, but just couldn’t convert.

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The 1970 Brazil side had an average defence at best, apart from Carlos Alberto. The keeper and both centre backs were poor, Geoff Astle caused them problems. But they could kick people when they had to. Going forward the best team of all time imho. Can’t remember who the left back was, he didn’t make an impression, strange as I was a left back at the time.

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14 hours ago, Lee909 said:

Rob Jones was injured for Euro 92. 

It's mad I don't ever think of him as a player of that era, I know 92-96 isn't much later but always think of him as a mid 90s player. 

 

Such a fucking shame, should have been part of the Houllier team that did the treble, came 2nd in 02, could easily have still be around the squad in 05(hed have been 34). And Gary Neville wouldn't have half the international caps he did

Rob Jones was a fantastic full back but his injury record was appalling and very unlucky. 

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