lol , certainly Rooney is not even World Class according to McClaren,so how could even be Fernando Torres, much less Van Basten.
He should be sacked all now, why wait until they qualify or not? If they're barely managing to qualify IF Russia lose, then you certainly don't want him managing your team against much tougher teams like Italy, Spain, Germany & co. who won't really tolerate the kind of bad football England have played to make Andorra & co. look better than they really are.
I don't think England are screwed that much with Rooney out, because as said, he's not exactly Van Basten, PLUS he only recently started scoring after a 3 or 4 YEAR drought, and so strikers like Crouch, Owen, Defoe, EVEN Joe Cole, i mean if Rooney wasn't scoring then surely Heskey is an option, Theo Walcott and others can do a good job with shrewd managing. I mean, Russia did beat England with lesser known strikers, at this level, managers tend to make more of a difference than just individual players - NOTE Greece are defending champions!
Explain though how the great majority of English strikers are not good enough...I'm just saying, in Italy and Spain, even Germany, you find players at clubs who are even low down in the table among the leading goal-getters, yet in England where small clubs are filled with English players, many of them cannot manage veryy many goals. Even among the top 5 players, Rooney is #5 arguably because he's at Man United - i dunno maybe, but I find it rather odd. I can't blame foreign players for that, because Andy Johnson showed that they are goals out there to get if you're good enough, even if you're at lowly clubs. I mean look how Benjani is at the top already with 8 goals. That's more than half of Wayne Rooney's goals (14) last season.
A bigger question is, if Benjani can score more goals that any English striker, does that indicate the level that the strikers in England are at?
I wouldn't blame managers at big clubs for not giving them play, because like all other professionals, if you knew you were not guaranteed a start, why go - can't be to win trophies, becasue you'll be on the bench, so is it fair to say that English players play for the money - question for Carragher. You see if Country comes before Club, then I will do everything to make sure that I can play for my country even if it means playing at West Ham & co. who don't play 80 games a season and cause extra fatigue, injury and so on. Looking at it, Tevez might have been smarter than we even gave him due credit for.
Thoguhts to ponder i think.....
JOGO BONITA!