SWEDEN SOUR
As anyone will tell you, Roy Hodgson has a tactical mind so sharp that the British Medical Association has advised its members not to perform brain surgery on him for fear they will lacerate their fingers on his cerebellum. So tonight's crunch match with Sweden had the Fiver second-guessing what technical wizardry Roy would come up with. Would it be O'Ireland's 0-0-0 formation against Spain? Or, given Sweden's weakness against 87-year-old Chelsea flops, was a recall for Chris Sutton on the cards?
Those two options are too obvious for Roy though. Instead he will buck decades of English tradition and instruct his wingers to put in some crosses for a big man to head. The good news for Sweden is that the big man in question is Andy Carroll. "It is not necessarily a weakness to find crosses hard to deal with if the crosses are of a very good quality," said Mr Roy, as Theo Walcott's ball found the head of an IT worker in Slovakia. "In all the clubs I have worked at I have always done a lot of work on players getting in crossing situations and movement for crosses," as Stewart Downing aimed at Row Z … and floated the ball on to Carroll's forehead. Not that Mr Roy's retro approach is necessarily doomed. The Swedish defence broke down and cried every time a cross went anywhere near Andriy Shevchenko on Monday, Carroll was showing form at the end of the domestic season and also linked up to devastating effect with Downing for Liverp … and was showing form at the end of the domestic season.
