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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OakwoodDM" data-source="post: 2952913" data-attributes="member: 8609">The problem, in some part, is that Sven only had six places to pick, because, regardless of form, Rio Ferdinand, David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney were in his team if fit. Which means they had to be in the squad. What most of the criticism is about (other than his complete inability to make the team play better if they had a ropey first half, but that's been the case for a while) is the fact that he took 4 strikers, when conventional wisdom says you need 5, and when one of them still has a broken foot, one has barely reached fitness again after a long time out, and one of them has barely played professional football. When Peter Crouch is your most reliable striker, you start to worry. I suspect people wouldn't be so harsh on him if he'd done one of the following:1. Take a fifth striker. Darren Bent had a cracking season and deserved a place.2. Play Walcott. Ok, he's your wild card. Now show us what he can do.Sadly he did neither, and you ended with a situation where even if we'd made the semi final, we'd have been forced to play Crouch up front on his own. I wouldn't like his chances. Against the Portuguese centre backs he looked solid, and better than he had all tournament. Against Thuram and colleagues, he'd have had a hard time.As for Walcott, by taking him and not playing him, Sven's done more harm than good to the guy. He's 17. He wouldn't have expected a call up. But by taking him and then not even putting him in for the Sweden game, which was as close to a dead rubber as you're going to get in the world cup, when Owen got injured and Crouch was supposedly dropped to avoid a yellow card ban, you're telling him you've seen him in training and he's not good enough. That's got to hurt.</blockquote>

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