Text Box: In sports Sports Interviews taken during the PUSAG Games 2008, read what enthusiastic sports men and women were saying before their respective matches. Read interviews Who is to blame for England's failure? If any analyst was asked how to make the England football team a world force again he would point to British success in Beijing and say "show it the money". Follow the lead of every other ailing sport and invest hard cash. Rebuild Wembley, hire a top coach for £6million a year, pay the players film-star wages and tell them they are a Golden Generation. Then sit back and watch the medals and the plaudits fly. If we told him we had tried that one, then showed him a TV replay of Enlands game against the Czechs, he would probably shrug and say it's beyond saving. And agree with those Australians who argue us Poms only excel in sitting down sports. Bums in armchairs. Guns in hand. Take Harry Redknapp and Terry Venables who were on glorious form in the Setanta studio. After showing understandable anger at the turgidness on show, they went for Fabio Capello. "They're not the same players we see in the Premier League. What are we doing to them," yelled Harry, claiming if Steve McClaren had put on such a display he'd have been lynched. Venables chirped in: "If we were experimenting I'd be less worried but that seems to be his team." In other words, once again, that exhibition of one-footed, two-touch clod-hopping was all down to the man who picked the players, not the players who were picked. Just as it was under McClaren and Sven Goran Eriksson. They say a worker shouldn't blame his tools but maybe it's time we fingered the tools who have been led to believe an England shirt is theirs by birthright. Because the ones who flounder now are more or less the same ones who have floundered since 2001 when Eriksson took over. Ten of those who palyed in that game - David James, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Wes Brown, Steve Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry, Joe Cole, David Beckham and Emile Heskey - were England internationals in 2001, with John Terry and Wayne Rooney joining them two years later. Yet they play like total strangers, many clearly unable to shine at international level. It is inconceivable that for seven years inadequate coaches, poor tactics, a critical media and an impatient crowd would make so many players play so badly, so consistently. I can paint Capello as a clown if I want, but such a caricature is at massive odds with his track record. The same goes for Eriksson. We can argue (as Redknapp does) that an English coach would make these stars dazzle like they do for their clubs, but that ignores the fact that Capello is only there because the Englishman groomed for success - Steve McClaren, and his assistant, a certain Terry Venables - failed miserably. Wouldn't I do myself a service by admitting a glaring truth. These players cannot play together and produce a standard of football that anyone other than masochists, or Scotsmen, want to watch. Hence Wembley's 20,000 empty seats. Capello may be able to organise them, as Eriksson did, into a unit which reaches quarter-finals, but looking at this group's average age (by 2010 most will be in or around their 30s) that seems a pipedream. Qualification for the World Cup is the best England can hope for. And when you realise that it will only be achieved through dour play and setpieces you wonder what the point would be. It's not another new coach that England cries out for, just one to admit that this Golden Generation was a cruel mirage. That this team is a dysfunctional mess which will never succeed against the best or entertain against the mediocre. So let's take the shirts off at least half of them, draft in a new generation and start again. It's time to stop shooting the organ-grinder and start taking aim at the monkeys. FA PREMIER LEAGUE FIXTURES 2008/09 Here comes the FA Premier league first matches of the season. The new promoted terms include Stoke City, Hull City and West Brom. Saturday, 13 September 2008 Blackburn v Arsenal, 15:00 Fulham v Bolton, 15:00 Liverpool v Man Utd, 15:00 Man City v Chelsea, 15:00 Newcastle v Hull, 15:00 Portsmouth v Middlesbrough, 15:00 Stoke v Everton, 15:00 Tottenham v Aston Villa, 15:00 West Brom v West Ham, 15:00 Wigan v Sunderland, 15:00 ________________________________________ Saturday, 20 September 2008 Blackburn v Fulham, 15:00 Bolton v Arsenal, 15:00 Chelsea v Man Utd, 15:00 Hull v Everton, 15:00 Liverpool v Stoke, 15:00 Man City v Portsmouth, 15:00 Sunderland v Middlesbrough, 15:00 Tottenham v Wigan, 15:00 West Brom v Aston Villa, 15:00 West Ham v Newcastle, 15:00 ________________________________________ Saturday, 27 September 2008 Arsenal v Hull, 15:00 Aston Villa v Sunderland, 15:00 Everton v Liverpool, 15:00 Fulham v West Ham, 15:00 Man Utd v Bolton, 15:00 Middlesbrough v West Brom, 15:00 Newcastle v Blackburn, 15:00 Portsmouth v Tottenham, 15:00 Stoke v Chelsea, 15:00 Wigan v Man City, 15:00 E-mails writer: keita@mysrconline.com Published on: Sunday, 31 August 2008 —————————————————————————————————————— Send your Comments and Opinions to sports@mysrconline.com

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