Oh goody, the excuse for England not winning this tourney is age, so next cup we'll field the youngest team ever, under any manager because it won't matter. The English public/press have decided age is the key issue so the FA will pressure the English manager, be it Wenger, Fergie, Hodgeson or John Barnes, we'll get the team the English public BEG for before the cup, fail miserably and come up with a new key plan of rubbish.
Lennon, Walcott, Milner, Young and and Johnson should push to be wingers for England, well 2 of them went to the world cup and started games and weren't close to good enough, neither are "young" as in inexperienced.
Age doesn't mean ANYTHING, if you're good enough you're good enough, Lennon, Walcott, Milner AREN'T good enough, two of them are flavour of the month players despite having put in, what 4 years each in the prem and had 4 unimpressive seasons.
Lennon and Milner are supposedly good compared to previous seasons, both have incredibly poor stats and performances compared to Giggs in his hayday, or a Pires, Ronaldo, hell, even Wiltord, Reyes and a bunch of less high profile wingers. Milner scored 7, some penalties, despite playing a huge number of games, he's had a very very average season and the ONLY reason people somehow thought he was one of the best wingers this year is one thing, England, world cup, and hope without logic.
Lennon was equally unimpressive, he APPEARED useful, because he's fast, but his end product is still hopeless, he's still far too small, hopeless defensively and mentally, well, too stupid to be in a team wanting to win the world cup, don't get me started on Walcott, Milner, Lennon, SWP all look world class in comparison.
Young however, has been consistantly in the top 2-3 wingers in the league for the past 4 years, yet not even in the squad.
Age has smeg all to do with success, the quality of the squad, and having the FA/manager choose a squad they want without being pressured into fielding whoever the latest and greatest is in a tunnel vission having public.
Veron, frankly, at 36 has performed well above ANY English player at this tourney, so has Lucio, and Gilberto Silva, Senna at the Euro's, Pirlo changed the Italians the second he came on, Maldini was great into his late 30's.
Lampard might get a career ending injury, or he could be scoring even more and getting more assists and be the best player in the world in 4 years, throwing him out at this point because he MIGHT be too old in 4 years, is a joke.
What we need is a manager who will actually pick the form players when he says he will, and run with them, give them time, give new members a chance. Gabby and Young got played in ridiculous friendly teams that had never played together before. Crouch in a 10/11 normal starting side will play better than Young and Gabby with 2 normal starters and 9 players who've never played on the same pitch before, decided Young wasn't good enough on half a game, despite being in better form than 90% of the squad that went to the cup is a joke. Not least because he's and Gabby are as fast as SWP/Lennon, yet not 4 ft nothing, strong, quality delivery, gives us a quality corner/freekick taker, and he's incredibly strong defensively, getting back and covering runs.
The reason Villa are great defensively is NOT the back 4 alone, but the ENTIRE team, Young tracks back more than any other attacking player in the side, all season long every game he'll be in his own box making tackles/blocks and getting up the field for every attack.
