These are likely to be added to throughout the day…
So, the F1 spy scandal has reached a conclusion: for McLaren, a somewhat expensive one. For Ferrari, it’s still too soft.
This all follows new evidence that came to light implicating that McLaren did indeed use sensitive Ferrari data to their advantage. The evidence was submitted in the form of emails between de la Rosa (McLaren’s tester) and Alonso referencing sensitive Ferrari data that came from Mike Coughlan (via Nigel Stepney at Ferrari).
How this evidence came to light is more interesting: Alonso is alleged to have threatened Ron Dennis that, unless Ron made Alonso team leader, he’d show the emails to the FIA. (At the time, Ron claims he knew nothing of the emails and, given his widely publicised integrity, you’d be inclined to believe him.)
Ron then phoned the FIA to inform them of the emails, the FIA then asked the drivers for their full co-operation and the emails were disclosed. The rest is history.
Now, this is all based on rumour and conjecture: nobody is confirming the claims but, interestingly, nobody is exactly denying them either. The best we’ve had is from Alonso’s manager, Luis Garcia Abad:
When asked about the stories of Alonso threatening to reveal the email exchange to the FIA, Abad said: “It’s not true, and it’s not possible. The facts say it is not true because it happened in a different way.”
It’d be interesting to hear what those facts are and how it did happen. If your driver is accused of something as heinous as this, surely you’d issue a swift and thorough rejection?
Ron Dennis won’t confirm what was said between himself and Alonso, but he does say they spoke and that Alonso was “pretty upset by many things”:
“Fernando arrived, pretty upset by many things. I’m not going to give you the detail,” said Dennis.
“In a conversation that took place he said ‘I have something in my e-mail system which is from one of your engineers’.”
If Alonso really did threaten his team boss, then he seriously misjudged Ron Dennis. Anyone with an iota of knowledge about the history of McLaren knows that Ron doesn’t favour drivers: there has never been a ‘no 1′ McLaren driver.
You also have to question Alonso’s motivation: is he really that rattled by Hamilton that he’s prepared to blackmail his own team boss? And, according to one British paper today, prepared to offer his mechanics £650 each to help him beat Hamilton?
Now, Alonso is a double world champion. No mean feat, especially when you remember he beat a certain M Schumacher twice to get those titles. To become a world champion requires certain levels of tenacity, selfishness and ruthlessness.
But these are generally aimed at your competitors, not your own team. If the rumours are true, Alonso has seriously misjudged the situation and, more tellingly, his own standing with McLaren.
Israel on Saturday. Russia on Wednesday. Both Euro 2008 qualifiers that England need to win to be in with a realistic chance of qualifying for the tournament.
Steve McClaren was on the news this morning, and his gist went thus:
“I looked around the room and said “No excuses.” I was very happy with what I saw, with what I’ve got [the squad]. I said “We’ve got enough in this room to win those matches, and we will win them.”
Unfortunately I can’t find this quote anywhere online (yet), so you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a snippet from a press conference that’s bound to be replayed throughout the coming days.
After England’s abject display against Germany last month, I’d go for a draw against Israel and a win against Russia.
More worringly, perhaps, is McClaren’s view of England’s drab 0-0 draw with Israel in March. Referring to the inclusion of Heskey (lord help us) as a ‘focal point’, something that was missing from the game in March, McClaren said:
“We didn’t have a plan B.”
I can understand not having a plan C, D or E. But no plan B?
Really?
That is worrying.
So, England face Germany tomorrow in a ‘friendly’ international and Steve McClaren faces a selection dilemma: most of his first choice squad are out injured.
The list is rather long: Steven Gerrard, Owen Hargreaves, Darren Bent, Sol Campbell, Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch, Gary Neville, Jonathan Woodgate and Ledley King are all out. and Jamie Carragher has retired from international football.
Faced with this problem, I would like to see Steve take a risk or two and put a few new faces in the team.
Yes, I know — getting your first senior international cap against Germany is a tall order. There would be a lot of pressure. But it’s a friendly — the only thing at stake is national pride. And the possibility of a permanent berth in the squad if you perform.
Steve should be on the phone to Theo Walcott, Steven Taylor and Leighton Baines to see what they’re up to.
Sure, there’s the slight problem of a couple of Euro 2008 qualifiers coming up, where you’d want your first team fully fit, in harmony and firing on all four. But look at the other side of the coin: you might just find a face that lights up the team and gives it the confidence to go into the remaining Euro 2008 qualifiers all fired up.
You never know, it might put a bit of excitement back into English international football.
He did it: Hamilton’s on pole for tomorrow’s British GP.
Given the pace of the Ferrari throughout practice and Alonso’s during qualifying, this surprised me.
Good stuff. Ruined only slightly, as ever, by James ‘The Cock’ Allen attempting to feign excitement.
Elsewhere:
Now be off with you. Go do Facebook or something.
German TV channel RTL have made a computer reconstruction of Robert Kubica’s crash in Montreal the other weekend.
(The link is a Quicktime movie).
The video highlights the various safety devices working during the high-speed accident.
Here’s the actual accident:
Nigel Stepney has told the Sunday Times that he’s done nothing wrong and the allegations levelled at him are part of a “dirty tricks campaign”.
Lest we forget, Ferrari have lodged “an official complaint about his behaviour” to the relevant Italian authorities.
This story confused and surprised me when I first read it (Stepney’s been with the Scuderia since 1992) but it now seems inevitable that the relationship between Ferrari and Stepney is beyond repair. Unless the ‘dirty tricks’ quip relates to another team? Who knows.
The prospect of turning around Honda’s dire season must seem ever more attractive…
UPDATE: Ferrari have dismissed Nigel Stepney.
Red Bull launched their 2007 challenger today, and Adrian Newey is hopeful of a good year.
I agree with Adrian — it does most certainly look ‘McLaren-esque’. But whilst I broadly agree that three years of stable regulations are bound to produce similar cars up and down the grid, when he says that this design is ‘evolutionary’ I disagree.
Compare the 2006 RB2 to the new 2007 RB3.
Alright, looks aren’t everything — there’s a hell of a lot of engineering under the skin that we can’t see that may have been carried over. But it’s clear that the aerodynamics are radically different, the sculpting around the rear of the car is much tighter, the nose, front wing, rear wing, engine cover…
A good test would be to strip the two cars of their livery and sit them side by side. Then we’d see how re/evolutionary the design is.
It’d be also interesting to put an MP4-21 next to it.
Having said that, I think Red Bull are going to go very well this year.
I hate to admit it, but I was sitting on my sofa last night watching the textual reports from MacRumors.com coming in on the MacWorld Keynote. I started watching it at work at 5.15pm (the GMT when the keynote started), left work around 5.40pm and got home just after 6.15pm. In that time, Steve had unveiled the iPhone.
I frantically scrolled back down the page to see exactly how he’d unveiled it — it wasn’t the ‘One More Thing’ that I thought it would — it came right after the Apple TV announcement. I have to admit, I was 50/50 as to whether Apple would ever release a phone — they’re a computer company, right? — but they broke the mould when they released the iPod, and we knew the iTV/Apple TV box was coming so perhaps it’s not that surprising that they’re branching out into telecommunications.
I’ve yet to watch the keynote cast — there’s a lunchtime task — but from what I’ve seen on Apple’s site the iPhone appears just great. Their engineers have spent a lot of time working on the interface and interaction methods, figuring out what the phone should do (and what it should not do) and how it should do it. First impressions are that Steve’s right — current smart phones do not appear so smart now. I know that when it’s released (apparently by Q4 2007 in Europe) I shall want one.
So I guess it’s not surprising that ‘Apple Computer Inc.’ is no more. Long live ‘Apple Inc.’!
Amongst the furore, I wonder what’s happening with Leopard? Cabel Sasser has an interesting piece on a new patent filed by Apple for an interface creation tool — perhaps a resolution independent interface? Who knows. Hopefully we’ll be double-wowed by Leopard when it’s announced.
There’s around an hour to go until Mr Jobs comes on stage and puts us all out of our misery. Will it be a phone? The ‘iTV’ product? Video iPod? New look (and resolution independent) Leopard? Who knows.
MacRumors are covering the event live (albeit in a textual, non-video type way) as Apple aren’t providing a live feed for us non-US citizens. LoopRumors are also text-covering it.
LukeW have some great Interface Design Quotes — including quotes from Steve Jobs, Charles Eames and Jeffery Veen.
A must have list for whenever clients (or indeed, anyone) just don’t understand what you’re trying to do.
My favourite is by ‘unknown’ (unfortunately):
“Design is the art of gradually applying constraints until only one solution remains.”
Gizmodo expect an ‘iPhone’ announcement from Apple on Monday.
I wonder what these guys are making of the whole ‘iPhone’ moniker?
The FIA have released the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship entry list.
There’s a bit to take in — new sponsorship deals for McLaren (Vodafone), Renault (ING) and Williams (AT&T); a few rookies in top teams (Hamilton, Kovalainen) and the positioning of the drivers within teams. For example, I find it interesting to see Massa as no. 5 and Raikkonen as no.6 at Ferrari.
Looking down the list, it appears that teams give the first number to their longest serving driver (true of Renault, Ferrari, Honda, BMW, Red Bull, Williams, Spyker and Super Aguri).
In fact, only Honda and Toyota are the only teams with an unchanged lineup (OK, so BMW ran Kubica from Germany onwards last year, but they started with Villeneuve. Spyker haven’t confirmed their second seat yet, so it could go to Monteiro — which would also add them to this list).
I’m just looking forward to seeing how the respective graphics departments have done with the new colour schemes (McLaren = grey/black — Vodafone = red | Renault = yellow — ING = orange). An unenviable task!
Businessweek have a piece on Jonathan Ive, Apple’s vice-president of design, including his impressive portfolio.
The original iMac, iPod, Powerbook, Mac Mini–Ive is responsible for some great, great work. And then there’s the iPod Hifi…
The Design Museum is currently running an F1 exhibition called Formula One — The Great Design Race. I visited it yesterday and can wholeheartedly recommend it.
Yes, there are classic and modern F1 cars on show but for me the real gem of the exhibition was the on-board video footage through the ages–they’ve got on-board footage of Fangio, Senna and Stewart at great tracks such as Monaco and the old Nurburgring. What amazed me was the amount of slide Fangio and Stewart had to cope with: compared to modern-day F1, those cars slid around a lot!
The Nurburgring piece is truly amazing: it’s the first footage of the old 14.2 mile circuit I’ve ever seen and it was just amazing: cars skimming past trees and fields at 170 mph plus, the car leaping over crests, sliding all over the place, stark camber changes–it really is a great piece of footage.
If you’re in London and fancy a view, it runs until 29th October and costs only £7.
The Observer’s ‘Seeds of Change’ photography competition received some great entries. ‘Is he dead?’ by John Roberts is just great.
So, who goes where for 2007? Based on rumblings going around the sport, I will stick my neck out with the following predictions.
‘Flavor Flav’ Briatore will stay on as team principal for one more season, before deciding that shagging supermodels and creosoting himself is a much better way of spending his time. Gary Fisichella will be partnered by Jacques Fucking Villeneuve and the team will fail to score a single point all season, ending the careers of Fisichella and Fucking Villeneuve. Renault will consider rebadging themselves ‘Nissan Formula’ for 2008 and beyond to match their on-track aspirations.
Ron Dennis will spend most of 2007 realigning his strategical importance and developing governance strategies, whilst Fred Alonso will take pole for his first race with Team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Bridgestone V6 Johnny Walker SAP Mobil squad. His team-mate will be Gil de Ferran, who will be bought out of his Honda ’sporting director’ contract for £3.99. Lewis Hamilton will take on Gary Paffet in McLaren’s annual ‘Montoya Memorial Pie Eating Contest’, but he will ultimately lose.
Mike Schumacher will announce his retirement at the end of 2006 and take the helm as team boss in 2007. He’ll then hire Keith Raikkonnen as his no. 1 and coax Mike Hakkinen out of retirement as his no. 2, thereby creating a Finnish superteam and a host of ‘Finnish/finish’ marketing campaigns. One Ferrari driver will finish (geddit?) on the podium at every single race.
Ranulph Schumacher and James Trulli are retained for 2007, and nobody knows why.
Alex Vertz and Nick Rozberg will score enough points to secure fourth in the constructors for Williams, who will decide that their current ‘WilliamsF1′ logo is utter, utter shite and have it re-designed by a semi-decent company for 2007. Team Willy will go on to be a roaring success.
Jason Button and Ruth Barrichello will drive the Honda as hard as they can, but all they’ll get is a few podiums. Nick Fry will be exposed as the spiel-spewing android he truly is, and Matt Bishop will twat him in the teeth. Fry will cry and then explode.
Drivers Crazy Dave Coulthard and Mark Bloody Webber will win two races each, with Red Bull taking the constructor’s title. Adrian Oldey will grow a beard because Derek Mateschitz will ask him to. For sure, beards are just crazy.
Super Mario The-ssen will finally shave off that ridiculous moustache and get some proper glasses. Peter Sauber will have almost stopped laughing at the amount of hard cash he got for his team and will sport even bigger cigars. His bald spot will be tested relentlessly in Sauber’s wind tunnel, which incidentally is called “Sheba” after Peter’s dog’s best mate from way back.
Eddie ‘Fackin’ Jordan will buy back his F1 team for the nominal fee of £1. Whilst respraying the tubs back to glorious yellow, he’ll phone Rob Schneider and say “what the fack have ye done to me team y’cunt ya?!? Rhino?!? Who the cunt are they?!? I just signed O2 as my title sponsor, suck on those eggs you brute.” Rob Schneider will go back to selling steel and not being around much.
Antonio Banderas will be partnered by Damon Hill in 2007, who is allowed to keep his grey locks and beard via a neat tie-in marketing deal with Just for Men. The campaign will compare the length of time it takes to wash one’s grey out with the length of time one can stare at STR’s garish livery. Gerry Burger will remain as team principal and will hire Jean Alesi as his PR guru.
Elsewhere, David Richards will decide that he’s had enough of that fucking annoying semi-beard and will either fucking shave or grow a proper fucking beard. Oh and he’ll persuade Ron Dennis to let him have two old MP4/3 chassis for the 2008 season.
Khoi Vinh has an interesting take on the design of tabs as a method of interaction. The piece regards the interface design of IM clients, namely Adium and iChat with their tabbed chat windows, but the part that resonated with me regarded the tabs.
In the eight years or so I’ve been doing design for the Web, I’ve seen–and admittedly have also personally attempted–more unnecessary re-inventions of the basic tab metaphor than I care to recount. For some reason, we designers find the basic visual construction of tabs (perhaps most prominently displayed at Amazon.com) to be dissatisfactory, but there’s no denying that they work. I’ve come to grips with this, and now I tell any designer I work with: let tabs be tabs.
Why do designers try and reinvent the wheel here? This is something I am also guilty of–I recently has cause to tweak a design to make the main navigation more obvious and clear-cut, so I designed it as tabs. Despite trying numerous ’sexy’ tab designs, I found the simpler they were, the better they worked. In terms of design, the tabs were probably the most simple elements on the page. They didn’t need to be complicated. Tabs are understood.
It’s strange, Khoi cited Amazon’s tabs as an example of tabs ‘that work’. I’m sure most UI designers would look at them and think “they could be spruced up a bit”. But I bet most designers would struggle to keep them as usable and, well, obvious as they currently are.
The start of the annual WWDC always sparks a frenzy amongst Apple afficionados about what new and exciting features will make it into the next release of OS X.
There are many ideas being presented (John Gruber has his yearly WWDC prelude up), some good, some not so good, but I love the whole sense of anticipation.
Over at Veerle’s Blog there’s a lovely nostalgic post showing the various incarnations of OS X, from the Public Beta through to Tiger. Check out the bevels of doom in iTunes in 10.1!!!
And for a bit of fun and to get your Mac juices flowing, check out the Fake Leopard Screenshot contest winners over on Phill’s blog. The winning entry is excellent.
Juan Pablo Montoya has announced that he’s leaving F1 at the end of the season to race in the American Nascar series. This is serious news.
Montoya has the credentials to justify his presence in F1: 7 wins, 30 podiums, 13 pole positions and 3rd place finishes in the F1 World Championship (in 2002 and 2003). On paper, this looks like a man who belongs in F1. The fact he’s leaving can only be for one of two reasons: he’s either become disillusioned with the whole F1 circus, or he was left without a competitive seat in 2007 — it’s no secret that Montoya’s McLaren contract expires at the end of 2006, and some might argue that he’s the wrong side of 30 to be getting another shot with a top team.
Montoya and McLaren haven’t gelled, for whatever reason. The McLaren MP4-21 is an understeering beast, a trait JPM dispises, and whilst Raikkonen made the best of the MP4-21 last season on his way to winning 7 races, Montoya managed just three wins and 72 fewer points than Kimi.
So earlier in the year when contracts for 2007 and beyond were being discussed, many thought Montoya was heading out of McLaren (to be replaced by Alonso) perhaps ending up at Red Bull or Toyota. Montoya himself said nothing of his contractual situation, save that he ‘had numerous options’ to stay in F1.
I doubt that many people thought he would actually leave F1 though. Sure, there was speculation that he may hook up with Chip Ganassi (with whom he won his Indy 500 and CART titles) in IndyCar, and Nigel Roebuck hinted in his weekly column a week or so ago that NASCAR might appeal to JPM, but few actually thought a driver of Montoya’s calibre would be allowed to slip out of F1 without a competitive drive.
When asked by Autosport “What was the final straw in leaving Formula One and how did you justify taking a pay cut?” Montoya responded thus:
“I don’t think you’re going to be happy getting more money and being miserable all day. When I called Chip I said, ‘Chip you know what. I want to come back racing, and I think the best place to do racing is here (NASCAR).
“It’s not how many millions you’re making or how much money you’re making. It’s a matter of three years down the line are you going to be excited about what you’re doing or not. I think three years from now when I look at my career I’m going to be happier here.”
Which seems to explain why Montoya is going to NASCAR: he’s bored with F1. It’s a total travesty that someone of Montoya’s calibre should be allowed to leave in this fashion when a driver such as Ralf Schumacher is paid $stupid for crashing, moaning a lot and generally not being very good.
Now that Sven has gone, £25m richer, to pastures new, his squad of highly talented underachievers are beginning to lay into him. The general consensus is, apparently, that Sven was “was pretty hopeless and didn’t have a clue out there.”
No shit.
I wonder what it was that made the players realise this? The continual dismay shown by the media at his formations and tactics? The way England struggled, limped, squeaked and the ‘just-made-it-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth-into-the-quarters-again’ style of play? The fact that he took Walcott and didn’t play him, effectively meaning he took just 22 players?
Of the Walcott saga, Sven said that going to a World Cup would be good for the lad, despite the fact he didn’t actually play. I’d disagree there–taking a 17-year old to a World Cup and not playing him is just as likely to destroy his confidence. It’s been suggested that the FA could have financed Walcott’s trip to Germany as a guest, meaning Sven could actually take a decent striker. Still, I bet Jermaine Defoe appreciated the time in the garden.
If you’re an England player, what can you do though? You can’t very well tell your manager you think he’s shit. If he has an inkling of common sense, he’d pick up on that fact without you needing to point out his shortcomings. Do you tell the FA? That would be perceived as a back stab. Do you whinge about it internally and say the right things in press conferences? Probably. Then you’d blame the FA for appointing the berk in the first place.
After a glorious summer of football I suppose it’s inevitable that we’re about to be inundated with footballer autobiographies: Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Ashley Cole have all spent the summer writing instead of doing what they’re paid for: winning football matches (the World Cup would have been nice).
I only hope that the players are a bit more honest with McClaren.
England’s exit from the World Cup has been dissected by many people since last Saturday, with the blame generally falling squarely at the feet of Sven Goran Eriksson.
Criticised for continually picking Beckham despite his poor form, baffling critics and fans alike with his meddling formations and tactics, and rounded upon for taking a 17-year old to a World Cup and not playing him–it’s not hard to see why there are so many “Sven doesn’t have a clue” headlines screaming from the red-tops. But I think it’s actually much simpler than that: Sven just didn’t have the passion for winning football matches.
How many times did we see the Swede stand up and simply clap when England scored, whilst those around him (the England backroom staff, physios and his deputy McClaren) jumped and whooped for joy? Is it that he simply a mild mannered man, not one for shouting or jumping, but rather one who gets things done with a quiet efficient stealth? Or is it that he’s a bit of a bore, someone who did reasonably well at Lazio but doesn’t have the passion for winning international football matches? Who knows. Put it this way: had Beckham’s teammates simply stood where they were and politely clapped his goal against Ecuador, would you question their commitment to the cause?
I’ve always thought that Sven’s half time team-talks would be interesting to observe. I can’t imagine him giving anyone the Ferguson Hairdryer™ treatment, but then maybe he rouses players in a much more refined way. But if those watching the matches at home (or at least those watching the Portugal game at my flat) were asked, they’d probably say that those players needed a right good bollocking at half time in most of their matches. Portugal aside, England played poorly in every second half of every match in 2006.
David Lacey write in this piece on GU:
Perhaps Alan Ball should have given the team talk. Interviewed on TV before the match he spoke stirringly of the chance Eriksson’s players had to become a part of England’s football history, pointing out that the 1966 World Cup winners were still remembered 40 years on.
Think of the last England game you watched that had you screaming and jumping for joy. I mean, really celebrating. Are you thinking of the Argentina game in the 2002 World Cup? Where Beckham laid to rest a demon that had haunted him ever since France 98 by scoring the winning penalty that helped dump Argentina out. England v Argentina has plenty of history behind it. You’d be hard pressed to find a football match more charged with passion.
Beckham scored a penalty.
Against Argentina.
And it was the winning goal!
I bet if you look back, you were hugging whoever was next to you. I know I was.
Take a look at Sven’s reaction then.
Kind of says it all really.
Now, this isn’t a ‘the England manager isn’t English’ diatribe. I’m talking passion. Sven must surely know what it means to beat Argentina, regardless of whether you’re England or not. It’d be like beating Brazil, Germany, Italy–any top flight nation. If you beat them at a World Cup, and by beating them it means they’re out of the competition, would you not be a bit more roused?
To prove my point, imagine if that were Scolari sitting there. Or Wenger. Or Mourinho. They’d be up there high-fiving McClaren et al.
I just don’t think Sven had the passion. And why would he? £5m a year, free tickets to any Premiership match he wanted and not a lot of work to do in a year. Those facts do not constitute the travesty.
The travesty is that the FA let him stay on for as long as he did.
(Picture taken from this piece on the BBC site about Sven’s 5½ year reign. It’s picture no. 6, if you want to take a look.)
Following on from a previous post (available here) I had a go at tossing my camera in the air with a timed shutter to see what I got. It was a lot harder than expected!
For a start, the camera shut off the first few times. I’m guessing the innards don’t like being hurled around too much! I did eventually manage to time the throw right so that the camera took a shot as it was in the air, but the results were mainly sky.
So I tried a different tack: putting the camera face up on a smooth table and spinning it. That didn’t really work, all I got were slightly blurry pictures of me looking expectantly at the camera! So I’ve discovered my technique needs a lot of refinement, but it was encouraging to get even just one result. Not a decent one by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it wasn’t a total abject failure!
I hope to have another go soon at some more tossing techniques (anyone arriving from Google having just searched for that term, I apologise for the total lack of porn on this post).
Camera Toss is a really interesting idea involving throwing your camera up in the air and having it take a shot. It sounds a bit reckless, and I’m sure there’s been many an episode of people not catching their cameras (which would make the resulting photos even more precious surely!) but the results are amazing.
Leaving the shutter open for up to 2 seconds and throwing your camera at light sources, in open spaces or just around any interesting geometric shapes seems to throw (no pun intended) out these great shots.
There’s a whole Camera Toss community, with instructions on how to take the pictures and a set of ‘guidelines’ which will dictate whether your shot gets into the Flickr pool or not.
In possibly the longest drawn out saga since ‘Lost’ began, Steve McClaren has been announced as the new England manager.
I aired my thoughts on the on-off appointment of Scolari last week, the main gist of which was that I wanted the best possible management setup for the national squad. Taking the remaining candidates into consideration (Big Sam, Psycho and Macca), I’d have to say (albeit begrudgingly) that McClaren is the most suited.
I say begrudgingly because the whole saga has been played out for too long and in an inappropriate way. By saying they wanted to announce SGE’s successor before the World Cup, the FA created a very public rock for their back.
I can’t shake the feeling that McClaren is second choice–a backup, fallback, call it what you will. I get the feeling that the FA’s hand was somewhat forced with the whole Scolari episode. Whilst it’s blindingly obvious that if you have a shortlist of candidates and, one by one, they rule themselves out and you’re left with Mr Last Place, I still get the impression the whole thing has been rushed.
I do not wish to rubbish Steve’s achievements–Carling Cup Winner in 2004, UEFA Cup Finalist in 2006, nor am I poo-pahing his pedigree (he worked under SAF at Man Utd for three years before taking the reigns at Boro and has been part of the England setup for many years).
Don’t get me wrong–I’d love, absolutely love to be proved 100% wrong, to have egg on my face come Euro 2008 and to join the Macca fanclub and denounce any negative feelings towards his appointment.
In the cold light of day, the FA had a choice. Of all the candidates (left), Steve McClaren is not only English, but he’s been part of the coaching team of England for many years, and so knows the players and the setup.
Perhaps most importantly though, he’s had Cup successes with Middlesbrough. And Cup competitions are all England compete in.
