Every team can look back to bad decisions or moments of luck and if only's after they go out of competitions but you only remember the things that go against you and forget the lucky breaks you get. If the game was ifball rather than football you'd have every team winning at the end.

Mentality. The last team to express themselves and thrive doing so was in Euro 96 (yes, I know we weren't perfect in that tournanent at times too).

Almost every team since has looked rigid with fear of failure with a formation to match.

Doggedness in sticking to 4-4-2 meanihg the likes of Scholes and Gerrard were played woefully out of position was verging on criminal negligence. Stoic, unimaginative managers (interlaced witn some unhinged or tactically naive ones) trotting out teams drilled to within an inch of their lives in anything but expressing themselves on a football pitch.

Owen, Cole, Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham, Ferdinand, Scholes et al were all supreme players at their best in different ways but never coincided with a fearless manager who was a tactically flexible, brave motivator.

If Hodgson is the answer, I'm not even bothering to ask what the question was.

Our Euro 2016 group gives us the opportunity to be brave and evolve a hungry, young fearless team that will play with a bit of an arrogant swagger that youth naturally brings - we need to change the England culture.

For the qualifiers I'd start with...


...and send them out to show the world what THEY can do not how to stop the opposition doing the same.

I'd rebuild the culture of being proud to pull on the shirt and for it to be a privilege - something special to be a part of. Blow the cobwebs away, the coaching dinosaurs and get the media on side.

The answer is simple really, we came up against better teams. I can't think of one tournament since 1998 where we deserved to go any further than we did.

And how exactly would that be done? It sounds like another 'pride and passion' argument, where our current lot were not really lacking.

There seems to be a lot of focus on youth in people's arguments as well. They should be given a shot, but there is no guarantee that they will ever even play as good as the current lot.

Golden shower!!

I agree with your assessment of the 'Golden Generation' and management problem. Really they needed someone to scare the shyte out of them if they lost, with no fears of dropping "stars", someone like Fergie or Mourinho.

They were a good bunch of individuals, but they were never a team and that's what matters. Add to that our total inability to play composed possession football and you have your reasons.

1998 looked like a great team and it just went downhill from there. England's inability to score penalties certainly has a lot to do with its lack of success. However, one of the things I have notices about English players is that they are very unfit physically. I don't know if it has something to do with playing more games in the PL than other countries or with the training in their clubs, but compare for instance the level of fitness of the Bayern Munich players to the ones who play in England and it's quite a striking difference.

Germany has a winter break of six weeks I think. I know this is an old chestnut that keeps cropping up every time England fail at these tournaments and there are pros and cons but it must be a factor. Plus they have an 18 team Bundesliga. I know there isn't an appetite to reduce the PL to 18 teams but it has been mooted in the past.

Not sure what the answer is. Fans love the winter games. Maybe have a break when there's a summer tournament? Scrap FA Cup replay's from the 3rd or 4th round? Just throwing it out there!

The person who first coined 'The Golden Generation' moniker for the England team of the last decade has a huge cross to bear.

Never have a group of people been so misnamed.

I'm still struggling to know what they ever achieved as a collective to be referred to in such reverential terms.

Campbell's 'goal' against Portugal in 04 was legitimately disallowed (Terry's fault) as was his 'goal' against Argentina in 98 ('thank' to Shearer).

England were poor in that Germany game - the Germans might probably have won even if it had been 2 - 2 at half time.
Why didn't England use that disallowed goal as motivation - it didn't look like they did.

Pretty much this.

There were too many undroppable players. Lampard was a passenger for years, always saving his worst for World Cups, but he was always there. Beckham would have been in the 2010 squad if he hadn't done his achilles and then he went anyway as a mascot/cheerleader - talk about pandering! Scholes was shoved out on the left to accomodate Gerrard and Lampard, when he should have been used in the centre as a playmaker.