Baines and Barkley figure in England win

Call me old-fashioned but I like my centre-halves to put their foot in and clear their lines – not piss about as this manager demands. But then, he would wish all No 5s to be like David Louise!

They were fine and safe tonight, Colin, but they're a great deal better than that if only they would take the brakes off themselves.

Just look at the team. Jones and Cahill aren't top draw but get in above a player who is (Stones). The midfield three is Henderson (rubbish), Delph (rubbish), and Carrick (good but 34) and we have two wide players who don't want to stay wide. We'll get done by the first decent team we meet.

Frankly, if Lampard, Gerrard and Cole hadn't retired, Roy would still be picking them. The England team is only ever dictated by the club you pay for. Just look at Henderson shaking his head coming off thinking he is the big I am and should be getting 90 minutes. He wouldn't even be an international for any other top country but because he's a Liverpool player he thinks he has the golden ticket, the same way Jones can just walk back into the team ahead of Jagielka who has been in great form for England and recently for us.

When the media start writing about England, you suddenly realise there isn't one of them who knows anything about football. Can't wait for Delph Henderson Sterling v Kroos Schweinsteiger Ozil, Iniesta Busquets Fabregas, Verrati Pirlo Marchisio.

Besides, our players never get any credit, it's always about the Red Shite players.

James is right: we haven't got enough real quality to compete against the best teams in the world although Woy is doing a good job with what he has to work with and the players trust him, so keep him in the job !

A familiar story; although I had the game on in the background, it was no more than a glorified training session. How they manage to attract 80,000 paying customers for games like that amazes me... this recession malarky mustn't be hitting certain parts of the nation too hard.

I admire Jagielka despite the snipers on here and he has carried EFC defensively along with Distin and now Stones. This is despite poor interlopers like Heitinga and Alcaraz who were/are not good enough.

Baines was okay. Considering the lousy opposition, he should be. Barkley was barely adequate. He needs a break and some serious coaching. He runs up blind alleys and dwells on the ball. Just like he's done all season for Everton. I just don't think he is anything like the player he's made out to be.

Maybe a season playing out of position for Martinez has stunted his developement or maybe OFM was right and he's just not that good.

Ultimately Hodgson suffers from what a lot of managers in the English game, and British managers in particular suffer from (Ferguson excepted). They will always value the athletic, all-action, hard-working powerful central midfielder.

In fairness, it's not even just British managers; Capello started the 2010 World Cup with a midfield of Gerrard, Lampard, Barry & Milner. Moyes would do the same, for some reason Neville and Rodwell were preferred to Osman and Arteta in the middle. Now Hodgson will go with Gerrard and Henderson or Henderson and Milner. Why would he never go with say a lineup of Wilshere Mason and Barkley? Three natural footballers who could pass and move and create for others.

It seems to be a condition of the English game that affects all that we see the centre of midfield as something that must be defended. Martinez also – he puts two sometimes three defensive mids in there.

Why? The games England played against Italy in 2012 and 2014 illustrate the futility of this perfectly. When you come up against absolute top class midfielders like Pirlo, Verrati, Marchisio, playing holding midfielders is almost irrelevant. If you sit deep and back off them they will float balls wherever they want in behind your backline as they did to Balotelli. So then you end up trying to press them high up (something holding mids are rubbish at anyway) and they simply play round you.

A better approach would be just to accept the futility of trying to defend against top class teams when they have the ball, and instead try and defend by actually keeping the ball away from them and attacking them. Managers would see a midfield of Barkley, Wilshere and Carrick as wide open and offering no protection but actually they'd keep the ball away from the other team better than Henderson, Milner and Gerrard would. The same way Osman, Gibson and Pienaar could line up for Everton in the middle and have absolutely no pace or strength yet they'd toy with a midfield of Besic, Barry and McCarthy who regularly concede goals despite playing as three defensive midfielders. I don't get why managers do it, and clearly one of the greatest of all time Ferguson didn't either because he would just play two ball players in a two Keane and Scholes, and then later Carrick and Scholes.

I thought when Barcelona came to power everyone would start appreciating the real footballers more even if they were short or slow. But instead you just get people like Martinez adopting the mindless passing part of it but still playing with the classic athletic non footballers in centre mid.

That is why ultimately England will never win anything. We don't have the class to win it on paper but then are you telling me a German team with no recognised striker and Per Mertesacker in the backline was the perfect 11 either? No. We would give ourselves a chance by playing Wilshere and Barkley to bring our attacking talent into the game. The first big team we meet though would just strangle the likes of Henderson and Milner exactly the same way as they did Gerrard and Lampard because these athletes cannot control games.

England's cause is also not helped by playing Liverpool's Henderson, who is pretty awful in midfield. England looked better when Barkley came on as second-half sub.

Looking at these two in an Everton context, I don't consider either of them as effective as they were two seasons ago. Martinez has done for both of them.

I bet poor Jags will start against a good Italy side, and when England concede. idiots like Andy Townsend will start criticising him. Especially after Jones has played against the most impotent international side I have ever seen.

What is the point of a friendly so soon after a proper qualifier?

A number of England players persistently fail to give the ball to Baines when he gets in to good forward positions. This has been a problem for some time but seems to be particularly prevalent amongst RS players. Or is that an imaginary bias on my part?

Barkley also did quite well but whenever he plays he looks to have Martinez's voice whispering in his ear saying "Don't take risks, Ross – possession is God!" I'd say he too looked better for England than he has been lately for us. I've no doubt that he'll be a key player for us in the future. Probably when Matinez has said adios!

The sun is shining here but he's taking no credit for that!

There's a decent number of Everton players in there, and up-front there are young players that aren't afraid of beating a man. Rooney, Barkley, Welbeck, Chamberlain, Walcott, Kane, Sturridge, and Sterling are all players with the ability to make watching England exciting rather than the chore it's been in the past (even in spite of the latter two's unfortunate choice of club).

As for last night – Baines had a decent game. It was all coming down his flank. And Barkley seems to play with a little more freedom and under less pressure for England than Everton at the minute.

I cannot really see how the England team is going to improve significantly playing qualifying games against the likes of San Marino, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovenia. That's pretty much almost 8 wins out of 8 guaranteed = massive build up in the press as 'one of the favourites', followed inevitably by an exit at the group stage and rounds of finger pointing and soul searching... but hey, at least Rooney gets to beat Charlton's record scoring against the likes of mighty San Marino and Estonia........

European Championship and World Cup qualifying used to be interesting to watch as the games were competitive; now I can barely be bothered to check the score of a training match as it's pretty much guaranteed who will qualify.

Wake me up in 2016.

Football is now a gigantic cartel geared to keep the rich and powerful at the top and the rest of us feeding off scraps.

The only reason the players you mention made England "unlikeable" was the 10 years of total failure to make a decent attempt to win the World Cup or European Championship. After another 10 years of abject failure the current bunch will be "unlikeable" as well.

England have been huffing and puffing away at international level since 1966. Next year it will be 50 years since we won the World Cup. Our one solitary success. Even that required playing at home and a dubious linesman decision.

The fact is that English football doesn't "do" international football. Between Ramsey and Woy we've had 16 managers. Each one the new messiah only to fail miserably. We've tried English managers and foreign managers. All to no avail. One flavour of the month player after another has come and gone. Now we have Harry Kane (who the fuck names their son Harold) to pin our hopes on. But next year when he's not so hot the media will eat him alive like they do with all those who don't live up to expectations.

Really we just want our clubs to be successful and we don't care how many foreigners they have to recruit to do it.

Da iawn hogia - daliwch ati.

Draw any comparisons anywhere? No, I didn't either.

Somewhat?? The prince of last summer has turned into a weirdly ultra talented nobody. It kills me because he is a favourite, but how does a manager let his crown jewel wilt before his eyes like that? 㿞M?? We'd be lucky to get 㾻M now.