Boooooooo! Hisssssssssssss! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! Those are just some of the cleaner comments directed to former England manager Steve McClaren. Sadly, we all remember those scenes in Croatia where he failed to lead England into Euro 2008. Granted, they’d still loose the competition, but loosing at a further stage in the competition is much more acceptable then not qualifying at all.
After hiding behind his umbrella, it took the FA a mere couple of fours to replace him for an Italian who could hardly speak any English. Whoever said that the higher powers in English football are stupid? McClaren’s post England career has been fairly well documented – mostly by The Sun who tend to mock him a bit. So far in his spare time, he spend most of his payoff for being crap to buy a few luxury villas somewhere where people don’t know who he is.
Ironically, he was given the job of commentating on Radio 5 Live during its coverage of Euro 200. As you can imagine, this choice was looked at in disbelief from most fans. Just like Tin Henman commentating on Wimbledon this year, yet another failure gets to tell us how bad a team or competitor is.
However, McClaren has returned to managing real sides. Wanting to get away from the UK media, he resigned to the Dutch league where he is charge of the little known FC Twente. The team have done fairly well as they have got in to a position of battling out for a Champions League spot. However, they have to fight it out against another team. And wouldn’t you know it, only ruddy Arsenal have been picked.
What a headache for McClaren he knows has to come back and face the demons of English football. Most people will probably want him to fail just because of his wonky England managerial past. Buy Arsenal do have a lot of players out injured tonight and stars missing from last season due to be transferred. Somehow I don’t think this game will be as one sided as what people think. Yes we can all slate him, but he has had experience at a high level and Wenger may just be dumb enough to underestimate him and the team.
