England manager Hope Powell has been successful by trusting established names, but a few tweaks could help avoid an early exit
Having horribly underperformed against Spain on Friday, England face Russia in urgent need of three points. Their Euro 2013 campaign needs not so much a kickstart as a rescue, with France looking likely to get out of the group with a match to spare and the other groups close enough to suggest that the best third-placed teams will be there. "I think that, realistically, we have to win the game if we want to stay in the competition," said the manager, Hope Powell. "It's a must-win match." Powell suggested that nerves had played a part in England's uncharacteristically untidy, disjointed display against Spain (who have probably not had enough credit for the profit they made from their own strengths, rather than England's weaknesses). Her players needed to be reminded of how good they are, she said, how well they had been doing coming into the tournament on an 11-match unbeaten run. They needed to shrug off any pressure added by knowing that more than a million people were watching back home.
Which leaves us with a bit of a quandary when it comes to any changes for today's match. The manager's appraisal of Friday's 3-2 defeat was not uncritical: she said immediately afterwards that the team had never really turned up. The players have apparently discussed the match at length and been "brutally honest" about what went wrong against Spain (and for those wondering, this was a case of things going wrong; England, if you haven't seen them, are capable of far better). All of this, however, feels like it lays the way for an unchanged starting XI against Russia – a chance to 'put things right' – when it feels like change would be a tonic for this England side. With one or two injury-forced exceptions, this is what Powell considers to be her strongest XI, her go-to team: when England reached the final of the Cyprus Cup earlier this year, the front four of Rachel Yankey, Fara Williams, Eniola Aluko and Ellen White was restored to the starting line-up and less established players who had been given game time earlier in the tournament – Jordan Nobbs, Toni Duggan, Rachel Williams – watched the first half from the bench. Though the impressive young Liverpool central defender Gemma Bonner is in the squad for Euro 2013, Casey Stoney was restored to the starting line-up as soon as she was deemed fit enough. Powell has never ignored young and less established players when picking her squads but has always preferred to rely on the players she knows better.
Not that Powell is unflinchingly conservative or happy blindly to paper over the cracks. In the build-up to the 2011 World Cup, England beat Turkey 3-0 – but having taken more than an hour to score the first against their hapless opponents, received heavy criticism from their manager. "Some of the passing was atrocious … they make the game difficult at times by some of the stupid decisions they make," she said, singling out Fara Williams and warning that the midfielder would "find herself out of the team" if she didn't improve. The manager was also openly critical of players who didn't step up to take penalties as England were beaten in the quarter-final by France. But looking back over the last handful of major tournaments, it is clear that Powell is not the kind of manager to take a big red marker to her teamsheet in the midst of things. Aluko forced her way in to the Euro 2005 side at Amanda Barr's expense; Jill Scott had an excellent 2006-07 and once in the side at that summer's World Cup, held on to her place; in 2011 Ellen White ousted Aluko as the starting striker. Largely, though, the players to have featured in the annual invitational in Cyprus over the last few years have remained squad players at best.
In the case of the men's squad, there have been calls for several years to radically shake up the squad, oust the older players and prime younger players for future tournaments, essentially abandoning hope of making much of an impact on major tournaments in the short term. For the women's squad the situation is radically different, having come within a few inches of the World Cup semi-final two years ago and having reached the European final in 2009. When the team fell short in Euro 2005 the feeling was not that the team was wrong, only the timing; since then a tinkering approach has yielded progress. In Sweden, tinkering could make a big impact.
When England did have control of things against Spain, in brief spells, they struggled to convert possession into danger: White was isolated up front; Yankey and Aluko, who covered enormous amounts of ground, could not find space out wide against the Spanish full-backs who had pressed them back for longer spells. Apart from a fantastic shot that forced a save from Ainhoa Tirapu in the first half, Williams looked out of sorts and was not the link between back and front - Scott was needed to push up from a deeper position to do that. The Russians, however, gave France all sorts of room to play, particularly in wide positions, and the roving of France's forwards pulled the Russian defenders out of shape. With that in mind it would be good to see England line up a little differently today: certainly with Arsenal's Jordan Nobbs in the middle of two of Yankey, Aluko and Karen Carney. Nobbs has the ingenuity and drive to give England the oomph that was so lacking on Friday. The Everton striker Toni Duggan should also be psyching herself up for a game, perhaps alongside White, with only one of the Scott-Anita Asante pivot retained at the back of midfield. There is danger in taking Russia too lightly, but if England must win this game, they could do worse than set out to grab it by the scruff of the neck.
Women's Euro 2013
England women's football team
Women's football
Georgina Turner
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