Hodgson caused half the problems this Euro's himself though.. I mean why would you use Milner as a bodyguard for your Right Back when you could just of took a Defensive Right Back in Micah Richards and used a pacey winger such as Walcott from the start.
Because Walcott is an excellent impact sub, but really didn't have the season to justify being started. He's all pace, but STILL hasn't worked out how to play as a proper winger in anything other than Wenger's 4-2-3-1, which uses direct players like strikers on the wings anyway. As such, Walcott isn't a 'pacey winger', he's a pacey striker from the wing. He's really not that great that far away from goal in a 4-4-1-1. Milner made sense.
We lacked for Central Mid options when Frank Lampard got injured, especially a deep-lying playmaker and Carrick said he would come if he was needed, which he was desperately for some creativity in the central midfield to supply the wingers/forwards, but he ignored it and just took Henderson leaving us with Gerrard and Parker as the first choice pair, although Gerrard was great we always struggled with possession in every game and needed a Carrick badly.
Certainly. It was hardly Hodgson's fault that our best deep-lying playmaker, Wilshere, was handled with all the grace and precision of a sledgehammer by Arsenal's physios. Carrick... well, I've made my feelings clear on him before, but I can certainly accept that he doesn't want to play second fiddle any more. Hodgson was boxed in: either he guarantee a starting spot to Carrick, which is a bit unfair on everyone else, or he says 'thank you for your service, but no thanks'. I, frankly, agree with Roy on this one.
Our troubles with possession go far beyond Gerrard and Parker. It's a deep-lying, mentality problem, and Hodgson couldn't be expected to solve it in two weeks.
Our defence was flawed, Glen Johnson had a good tournament but numerous times played the opposition onside from dead ball situations when the defence pushed up he was not alert, most notably against Italy.
Undeniable, but for the most part the defence did well.
Also Terry as well as he played (with a deep defensive line), made our defence very dodgy, we had to sit deep due to his lack of any 'pace' which often invited opposition on to us and we could not get out, the few times we did push up we were often exposed with a long ball due to either Terry's lack of pace or Johnson's positioning. Why he did not play someone like Jagielka and Lescott I never know, higher defensive line would of took a lot of pressure off if played effectively.
Again, true. But we didn't concede any goals from our defensive line playing someone onside in open play, so I'm loathe to take it as a major problem.
Then against Italy we were totally dominated in midfield and Hodgson kept with the same formation he started with and as the game went on it just got worse and worse but he changed nothing, only bringing Walcott on which would not help as we could not get the ball nor the supply to him.
And thus we come to one of Hodgson's only faults for this tournament, though I'd be perfectly willing to lay a lot of the blame at Rooney's door. If he'd actually tracked Pirlo consistently like Hodgson asked him to - and I'm taking an educated guess that he did, given that Rooney's marking of Pirlo in the first few minutes was excellent - then it could've been a totally different ball game.