Richard Williams describes England’s 5-1 World Cup qualifying victory over Kazakhstan in London at the weekend as “surely the least creditable 5-1 victory in England’s history.” And the problem once again was the inability of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard to gel in the midfield.
Deprived of the injured Joe Cole, England manager Fabio Capello was unable to field the same starting lineup that had convincingly beaten Croatia last month, so Gerrard returned. Capello then “tried everything he could think of to unlock the puzzle. In fact he tried three different formations, each one intended to enable England’s two most prominent midfield players to fulfil their potential at the same time — or, as he later put it, ‘with synchronicity.'”
In the first half the two central players were either “too close to each other … and ended up exchanging meaningless short passes, or they were too far apart, and out of touch.” Gerrard’s distribution was off (no surprise there, then) and he repeatedly gave the ball away to the “skilful and energetic young Kazakhs.” After 40 minutes Capello moved Lampard to the right, then at halftime switched to a 4-4-2 formation, bringing on winger Shaun Wright-Phillips for defender Gareth Barry. But England’s goals resulted more from Kazakh exhaustion than sterling combination play between Lampard and Gerrard. When David Beckham came on 10 minutes from time he had all the time and space he wanted to put in dangerous crosses.
England was “lumpy and ponderous, lacking merit in almost every area until the players from Almaty, Astana, Ordabasy, Tobol and Zhetysu inevitably began to succumb to a lack of physical conditioning,” writes Williams. If we take this “deceptive scoreline” to assume that “Lampard and Gerrard can ever become a genuine partnership, then the painful lessons of the 2006 World Cup finals will need to be learnt all over again.”