The Alternative England – Part 2

Well, all the guessing is over, Roy Hodgson has selected his 23 man squad for the Euro's, and I'm going to see how close I got with my previous suggestions.

Keepers

Clean sweep here (after Foster ruled himself out), and very pleased to see John Ruddy get the call up, he's clearly going to be behind Hart in the pecking order, but will gain great experience and I wouldn't be worried if we had to call on him if Hart has a problem. Green is also a very solid 3^rd choice.

Right Backs

Glen Johnson the only true right back selected, although rumours suggest that Walker would have got the nod if not ruled out through injury. Out of the remaining defenders however, only Phil Jones can arguably play the role, which does raise the question over why maybe Micah Richards was left out.

Left Backs

As predicted Cole and Baines

Centre Halves

The big talking point here is the non-selection of Ferdinand, with John Terry getting the call instead. On the back of this last season and everything else that's going on, this seems a tad odd to me, especially after Rio had such a great season. Rumours suggest however that Roy is concerned about whether Rio can play numerous games in a short space of time, and he wasn't overly impressed on the suggestion that Rio couldn't play if Terry did. Looks like the better man may have lost out here. Lescott, Cahill and Phil Jones make up the numbers – again as I expected.

Central Midfielders

Barry, Gerrard, Parker and Milner.

So I got 2 out of 4 here, although I am very uninspired by the other 2 selections, Barry is nothing more than a very average plodder, and Milner has struggled to even get games this season, never mind perform well on top of this. A bit too much of the 'old guard' mentality with these selections. Let's just hope that Parker can get fully fit and stay fit, because the alternative looks a tad grim.

Wide Midfielders

Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Young and Downing.

SERIOUSLY? – STEWART f**king DOWNING made the squad??? On the back of his worst season ever where's he's done nothing right, looked like one of Liverpool's worst players, and has never convinced in an England squad every time he's played – DOWNING gets the call???

What an absolute shambles. Add in the omission of Lennon and A.Johnson, and our wing options look somewhat shaky. Arguably the worst area of selection out of the whole squad here.

Strikers

Rooney, Defoe, Welbeck and Carroll

I f**king knew Carroll was going to get the call over Holt despite everything Holt has done this year compared to Carroll, and frankly I'm too pissed off to go into much more detail here.

Congratulations Roy, on screwing up our already weak Euro chances with some truly awful selection choices. You have also proven the precedence that despite form and performances, if you're not at a 'big name' club, you won't get picked. Only 3 players out of the 23 come from sides outside the 'big' clubs, with Ruddy (Norwich 12^th), Baines (Everton 7^th) and Green (West Ham CCC), and even then Everton aren't exactly small. So in essence we've got 2 players from outside the usual suspects, and they're both keepers who won't play unless Hart is injured anyway.

It's a complete f**king joke, and makes a mockery of our National team. Players like Grant Holt have every right to feel gutted and like they've been kicked in the teeth, as apparently performing consistently well in the premiership against some of the best defenders in the game means f**k all if you're not doing it whilst playing for Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs or Man City - i.e. the top 6 sides.

As they would say in the armed forces “Same Shit – Different Day”.

Well that's me done with England for a while, I don't expect the manager to simply select the players I want or else, but I did hope that for once we'd have a manager who could look past names and clubs and pick players on merit, that have earned their place on the plane, and instead we've got a number of horribly under-performing selections taking the place of those that have had great seasons and justified their inclusion.

I bet Harry Redknapp is laughing his f**king arse off right now...