Experience or Form? Which One Would You Go For?

We have been here before. England’s performances so far have been under scrutiny and they have been panned by blood thirsty critics and fans alike. There is a feeling among most of us that the barrage aimed at England is quite reasonable but is it entirely the players fault? End of the day, it should be as after all, they are the ones playing but on this instance, I do believe that the coaching staff has to take some blame for England’s downfall. Players who perform admirably for their club hit a brick wall when it comes to the national team. We can say the same thing about France, but I am not going to go into that. If there is one annoying downside I have noticed from the 2 England games so far, it has been in terms of personnel. The substitutions especially have been baffling.

Nobody quite rightly knows what is going on inside Fabio Capello’s head at the moment but any suggestions that he is already losing the plot seems far fetched. I think fans and Capello himself in truth are quite not sure why a team that played well together for the qualifying matches seemed disjointed in every part of the field ( unless of course you are an England fan who is used to seeing England overhyped and tend to see them disappoint every single time in major tournaments). The truth is, England might have a few good individuals but as a team, they are just not clicking. Some might argue that this England team are just not good enough but plenty of us out there would not have expected Greece to even qualify from the group stages in Euro 2004 but they actually went and won it. It could be a one off (as clearly proven by the inadequate displays of the Greeks so far as well) but the backdrop off the Euro winning team was how the manager got them to click as a team. This is somewhat the same thing one England manager after another fails to do every single time. It is premature to suggest that England is going to get knocked at the group stages this time around and I am not going to anyway but let’s get to the point.

A point to ponder though is, if you were the England manager, would you go for experience or form. In an ideal world, both is essential and as past winners have shown most of the them who won it have both in abundance. When it comes to England though, I wonder the merits of experience over form. We can argue all year long, but logically thinking would it be worth a try to maybe go with form once in a while? I don’t see how experience helps your performance if throughout the season your form has been yo-yo (Green an example)? You can only have that much experience but if you are not in the best of form, the only thing you are going to see is mistakes like in the first game. King got injured against USA and was replaced by Carragher, an experienced international but he was beaten for pace quite a number of times by Altidore and you wonder if it was the likes of Torres and Robinho instead of Altidore (with all due respect), the outcome would have been entirely different. The same question could be asked if it had been an in form Adam Johnson instead of the lacklustre SWP who came on, would the outcome be different? It is however a big ‘IF’.

As I am saying this, Carragher will be suspended for the final group game so it’s a straight battle between Dawson and Upson to partner Terry. If you go for experience, you go for Upson but if you go for form it is Dawson who gets the nod. I for once believe it is time for Capello to start taking some risks and go for in form players rather than the experienced ones. The only way you are going to get experience is by playing, so Capello; play them. I would love to see the likes of Dawson given a chance and it is not always a failure if you see the likes of Muller and Pedro excelling for their respective countries. The question however remains, would you go for form or experience?

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