Rooney a leader of losers? Southgate must stay onside with clubs

From Andrew: 

Rooney was England captain for a disastrous World Cup and a disastrous Euros.

Now Southgate is calling him a leader. A leader of losers.

Watching the final minutes of England’s game with Iceland, we saw a team that gave up, without a fight.

Time to drop all the old guard and bring on fresh faces, who might actually fight until the end of every game.

Myles says:

Southgate is now saying he is not afraid to drop Rooney for the sake of the team.

Slovenia v England is on Tuesday night, so we’ll soon find out.

My England team would always be Dele Alli and 10 others.

Tomorrow I’d play Dele behind Vardy.

Lingard wide left, Rashford wide right,  Eric Dier-Jordan Henderson as anchors.

Rooney on the bench.

From Rhys Jaggar:
Myles,
I don’t think England teams are selected solely with England in mind.
There is probably a deal made with clubs about how long they play for.
It woudn’t surprise me if Spurs wanted Dier to have a two (or even three) week rest after a really hard 16 months of uninterrupted playing.
Whereas Utd would like Rooney and Lingard to play to sharpen them up. DItto Liverpool and Sturridge.
So I suspect the line up in Slovenia will be a bit different.
England’s biggest problem is not having precise plans for when a winger/full back gets to the byline. Time and again, Walker/Rose/others got there but cross came to nothing. I don’t understand why crossing isn’t as precise an art as passing, rather than a sort of well/maybe kind of put it somewhere called the danger area. England scored two goals by being precise. If they want to score more, precision must become the norm.
 As for Cruyff and Barca, well he built a superb coherent philosophy for football.
Of course if you are coherent for 30 years, it will produce a very good result.
The danger for everyone else is in trying to imitate it rather than find a way to overcome it.
It would be highly delusional to think you could out-Barca Barcelona in 3 years.
Especially if your manager hadn’t been at the heart of it all for 20 years. Better to find a different philosophy and hone that, me thinks.
Myles says:
Spainalona won three big tournaments, as you know.
 
I reckon we will score from crosses in Slovenia.
 
If we struggle on Tuesday night it will be because the injured Adam Lallana isn’t there to link it all up.
 
Bobby Robson’s England were good when Peter Beardsley played, boring when he didn’t.
Teddy Sheringham did a similar job for Venables.
 
Looking back, English football was 100 years of rough endeavour by highly-motivated English yeomen.
 
80% of the flair came from Irish, Scots and Welsh players.
 
Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Aston Villa all won the European Cup with three Scots playing leading roles.
 
Now the skills come from French, Spanish, Belgians, Africans and other foreigners.
 
Their talents, and crowds containing noisy travelling supporters, have made the EPL into a spectacle the whole world now watches.