Rio Ferdinand's omission from the England squad has been a hot topic of debate over the last week, and the general consensus seems to be that he was unfairly snubbed by England Manager Roy Hodgson. Reds legend Kenny Dalglish believes Hodgson made the right decision, but he's worried that the constant media furore over Ferdinand may have a negative impact on Martin Kelly, who was chosen ahead of Ferdinand to replace Gary Cahill.
Dalglish has laid low since having his Liverpool contract terminated by FSG, but now he's back in the spotlight with a new job at The Mirror. In his inaugural column, Dalglish insisted that Ferdinand is 'as good a central defender as there is', and despite ostensibly backing Roy Hodgson's decision, Dalglish also intimated that it was possible that the decision could've been based on non-footballing reasons:
"He [Ferdinand] is certainly as good as any English centre-back, and I feel for him if he is not going to the tournament for some reason other than football".
Whatever the reason, it's a moot point now anyway, and Dalglish was keen to stress that Kelly's state of mind should be taken into consideration:
"What about Martin Kelly, by the way? The longer everyone keeps chatting about Ferdinand, the more damaging it is for Kelly. Sooner or later, the lad is going to start saying to himself, ‘What am I doing here’? "
I think Dalglish makes a good point, but Kelly is clearly in the squad on merit, and the players and staff will do their best to make him feel welcome.
Kelly has rarely let Liverpool down over the last couple of years, and I'm sure if he gets a game at Euro 2012, he'll show the same quality in an England shirt as he has in a Liverpool shirt.
Jaimie Kanwar
Dalglish has laid low since having his Liverpool contract terminated by FSG, but now he's back in the spotlight with a new job at The Mirror. In his inaugural column, Dalglish insisted that Ferdinand is 'as good a central defender as there is', and despite ostensibly backing Roy Hodgson's decision, Dalglish also intimated that it was possible that the decision could've been based on non-footballing reasons:
"He [Ferdinand] is certainly as good as any English centre-back, and I feel for him if he is not going to the tournament for some reason other than football".
Whatever the reason, it's a moot point now anyway, and Dalglish was keen to stress that Kelly's state of mind should be taken into consideration:
"What about Martin Kelly, by the way? The longer everyone keeps chatting about Ferdinand, the more damaging it is for Kelly. Sooner or later, the lad is going to start saying to himself, ‘What am I doing here’? "
I think Dalglish makes a good point, but Kelly is clearly in the squad on merit, and the players and staff will do their best to make him feel welcome.
Kelly has rarely let Liverpool down over the last couple of years, and I'm sure if he gets a game at Euro 2012, he'll show the same quality in an England shirt as he has in a Liverpool shirt.
Jaimie Kanwar
If you compare the stats of the two players in question over the past two seasons there is no doubt who should be in Poland/Ukraine, and who shouldn't.
ReplyDeleteKenny saying Kelly should be there is typical of his judgement of a good player.
www.talkingreds.net
Kelly is not international class and will never be .Just being born within 30 miles of liverpool should not delude anyone that he can play we have fans that have thought that about spearing for the last 2 years.
ReplyDeleteOKAY. If Woy had picked all the oldies and had all of them stayed fit, he would have been crucified for sticking to the old guard thats so often failed. He would have been asked why did he not go for the young stars and start building for the future. A chance for him to pick the young stars presents itself and you whingers still want the old guard back again, what a confused bunch you lot are! I would have even left out Terry, Gerard, Barry, Parker, Rio and Lamps altogether and start afresh. Your old guard that you so clammering for, what exactly have they done to date? Crying out for Rio, people, seriously? Picture having an race between an old elephant against young greyhounds at the Euros! Get real you confused earthlings!
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to say anything on this. Apparently it seem that there is no need of an England manager as Ferdinand can pick the team - such arrogance. When can we expect all the players to decide who is or is not to be picked?
ReplyDeleteUtter gibberish, and to be pedantic he lives 17 miles from Anfield and was born 9 miles from there, as was Steven Gerrard. However, this means absolutely nothing. He has been excellent on each and every occasion I have seen him, and from my seat in the Paddock I get to assess his positional play and general awareness up close. Spearing on the other hand will never be anything more than a squad player with a maximum of 5 games at home in which he could excel.
ReplyDeleteyou obviously dont go to any games. give him a couple of years and he'll be international class -all day long. he's good defensively, has a good engine, great crosses and great going forward. Wait and see....
ReplyDeletelol you said it bubbles
ReplyDeletekelly will be englands first choice for right back for years.
ReplyDeletehe has great potential.
his debut against lyon was one of the best lfc debuts i have seen.
kenny didnt say kelly should be there, if u read carefully u will notice he stressed on the point the the "noise" over he being better than kelly and that kelly shouldn't be there will have a psychological impact on the kid. hey , i don't like kenny , but i totally agree , lets see what the kid can do.
ReplyDeletekelly is a top player and theres no doubting that good luck to him they should forget what every1 is saying and go there and put on a display when needed if not learn from the experience and not listen to a player that is past it
ReplyDeletestuff ferdinand, sod terry, a bigger pair of wa*kers, i doubt you will find anywhwere. i hope martin ignores all the bull surrounding those two and just enjoys the tournament, whether he gets a chance or not.
ReplyDeleteas carroll will be englands no 9 tit . its a game of opinions isnt it with none more relevent than the other
ReplyDeletewe'll see but to be honest,i don't give two shites about the english side.personally i don't see carroll earning 50caps for his country but you seem to like him.
ReplyDeletemate i know what you mean i dont care about england either. I do like Carroll and I hope he will be a success for us. I agree with you about Kelly though and what people forget is he made the breakthrough to melwood through playing centre back so maybe Roy Hodgson knows this and likes the versatility Kelly can give.
ReplyDeleteYou know what makes me laugh even more over Rio (u got murked) Ferdinand saga is when Beckham was dropped from England he didn't moan half as much as Ferdinand. And Beckham brought more to England than Ferdinand would ever do (considering Beckham was the most one dimensional footballer ever).
ReplyDeleteKelly is as good a C/B as there is,but apparently not as good as Carragher.
ReplyDeleteThank God this old relic of a bygone era has left LFC. One thing`s for sure
Dalglish writing for the Mirror will not increase sales.
.
Kelly will never be a regular R/B for England or Liverpool,he is not
ReplyDeletequick enough for the modern full back game,C/B is his position,
or as i have been preaching for a while, i wish BR would try him at
holding midfield.
The bygone era of consistent success .
ReplyDeleteDalglish is no relic he is only guilty of casting pearls before swine .
LoL @ not quick enough !
ReplyDeleteKelly has pace to burn !
The boy gets up & down that line for us like a bolt of greased lightening !
I'd say he is one of the fastest defenders in the Premier League !
On top of that he has an eye for goal & the goals will follow as his experience & confidence grows .
He delivers a quality final ball consistently into the danger areas & or retains possession simply , safely & consistently .
Kelly is one hell of a prospect .
The only reason he hasnt been an outstanding young CB prospect for us yet is because he is so damn good from the full back positions !
Kelly at 22/23 is as versatile & as good as Carra was at 28 & like Carra & Steve Nichol before him , is probably hindering his own development by being too good for his own good , his usefullness & versatility is preventing him from specializing in one position .
I 100% expect Kelly to develop into an absolutely outstanding CB once he does specialize .
Sit tight , its in the post .
ReplyDeleteFerdinand wont even get in the GB squad for the Olympics with other aging players such as Becks Bellamy and Giggs. Ferdinand was not in the standby 5, no one made a fuss when Jagielka was called up for Barry and shouldnt for Kelly either. Ferdinand will be retired in 2 years.
ReplyDeletei'm irish so the england side at big tournaments is funny,they always manage to find something to make a bollix of it with.i think this is the poorest english squad in awhile though.an awful lot of inexperienced players-chambelrain,henderson,kelly,welbeck-even jagielka and lescott haven't played alot of international football- but the pressure is off so maybe they could pull off a surprise.
ReplyDeletepeople are forgetting that kelly is a good player in the midst of all this ferdinand shite.he isn't even a direct replacement for ferdiand-lescott and jagielka are next in line.
i don't think kelly will be phased by it,in fact it's a good experience for him.
i'd like to see hodgson do well and not have the 'it should have been redknapp' argument thrown at him.
holding midfield?
ReplyDeletewhat has he ever done to suggest he should be a holding midfielder?
how about we put reina and right full,i heard johnson got a pair of goalkeepers gloves one christmas and would love a chance.
kelly isn't a direct replacement for rio so i don't why the media are having a go.
ReplyDeletei'm irish so england don't really bother me but i hope hodgson does well and doesn't get the inevitable it should have been harry backlash.
he's picked alot of inexperienced players though-welbeck,henderson,kelly,chamberlain.
a draw against france would be a good result for england i think.
can only pick pick 3 players over 25 for the olympic squad that's why ferdiand isn't in.
ReplyDeletealso it doesn't help that he's a wanker.
He was a dinosaur.
ReplyDeleteHis signings, his dealings with the media, his decision making and tactics all showed that.
Funny how many people agree with Hodgson now, isn't it? Some people are being a bit hypocritical. If Ferdinand was a Liverpool player, and was fit, and the manager put Kelly or Lescott in before him, most supporters would, rightly, be up in arms. Of course, the Terry situation complicates things and, no doubt, with some of the characters on here, most supporters would back Terry on this one. If Ferdinand should not be there, Terry should not either, after he put back his court case to make sure he could play and the previous manager resigned over the captaincy.
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, I look forward to the rest of the country realising what all the fuss about Hodgson was about. Everyone who thought it was harsh to chase him out of the club.
If ever a competition was poor publicity for football, this one is going to be it. Better get saving for the Brasil 2014 world cup, because Russia and Qatar won't be much better either. There have been some cracking international football tournaments lately, but the neanderthals in Eastern Europe are determined to bring the game back down to earth.
Nonsense, you are being fed too much newspaper hype. Beckham brought one great free kick and a few good performances. Ferdinand held the defence together for nearly ten years. First with Campbell, then with Terry. Central defence has been England's strongest area throughout that time. There;s no way that Beckham was a better player, worldwide, than Ferdinand who, for a time, was as good as any central defender anywhere.
ReplyDeleteBit harsh there, Titi. He does have a cleft palate though....
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, he 'forgets' to retire......
ReplyDeleteWhy do you say this competition is poor publicity for football, Gab? So far, the games have been pretty good - no nil-nils, not too much 'simulation' and just the one ridiculous red card.
ReplyDeleteOr are you basing your opinion purely on a Panorama documentary? Surely you realise that the media can portray anything they want to, if it suits their agenda? The 'journalist' seemed to take great umbrage in the fact that one fan called another club a 'Jewish' club, even though it WAS a Jewish club, and some people still regard Spurs as a Jewish team (and their own fans sing "Yids").
And did you not find it more alarming that a team that got stuffed 4-1 suddenly put in a complaint that one of their players was "racially abused"? Sly and cowardly.
Hi Jim
ReplyDeleteI'd try telling the steward who was kicked all over the place that it was just from a documentary, I did not see that, to be honest.
I'd say a competition where supporters openly wear black masks, without being pulled up for it, as in the Ukraine v Sweden game last night, is quite distasteful.
Are you seriously saying that you find nothing disturbing about the behaviour of some of the supporters? Having been to that part of the world, I'm not surprised, to be honest.
I did see the black mask, and it freaked my son out. Initially I did not regard it as racist, just weird. Looking back now, it probably was.
ReplyDeleteThere is always something disturbing about sets of supporters in a far foreign land. Do you not remember Italia '90 when the Eng-er-lund fans were ripping street cafes apart until they realised they actually had a chance of winning the bloody thing so started to tone it down?
I reckon you'll find just as many right-wingers with St. George's draped over their backs as you will following the Ukraine national side. The English media will always besmirch any Nation that has the temerity to bid for a tournament that surely is the God-given right of the English to hold - the very people who invented the game and gave it as our gift to the masses. I mean, half these countries wouldn't even be civilised had it not been for us teaching them how to play team sports.
At least the Ukrainians can plead ignorance, literally, as they have had very little contact with a predominantly black immigrant population....
I totally agree. But it is a part of the world that I know and they have a long way to go. They are doing what we were doing 30 years ago. And, in both countries, there are some of the nicest people that you could ever meet. I feel for the victims who get caught up in the nonsense, but I also feel sorry for the people who are embarrassed about how their country is being portrayed. I remember going places as an English youngster and being stereotyped because of what our peers were doing, so these thugs will stereotype their own countries for years.
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, we still have problems here and the Spanish have shown how bad their problems are. And the fact that people know they can get away with it in these places has made some supporters get bolder now.
Agree that our media has been very hypocritical, although i don't think many people knew much about countries like this apart from stereotypes in the press and I think that this competition, and their efforts to sweep things under the carpet, a hangover from the days of communism i reckon, has shocked a few people. The national press here are clearly not helping, either.
I think the problem is education, Gab.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at school I can only remember one Asian lad - Kameljit (who we used to call "Camel Shit", so the poor sod has probably had a complex since then) and a Nigerian who I kept away from because he looked a bit scary. (!!)
I used the word 'Paki' and still do, and I apologise if that offends anybody, but for people of my generation, it was just a shortened term of a longer word, similar to Brit I suppose. There was no malice intended, indeed I always regarded it as a term of endearment (how naiive). It's just how people were / are brought up, it doesn't make them bad people.My dad always used to threaten me that if I didn't work harder I would have to go to the "Bobby-Jo school". Again, I don't think of this as racism or prejudice, just more a fear of the unknown. White middle-class people just didn't come into contact with many blacks. I don't think I have ever had a black mate. I certainly don't have any Manc ones....I believe that most of these Eastern Bloc countries simply suffer from a fear of the unknown. Hope I haven't upset anyone. Just trying to be honest.Quite cathartic, in a way.