No defending going on here - I'm one of the failures who headed to Australia for a better life.

By the dunces you're trying to defend :lol:

Unlike Australia and the USA, two countries founded on the principal of "if you've failed elsewhere, try here"

Fair point, but it's still an arsehole thing to do.

Dude, Britain is 64 million people on a tiny island, that's what centuries of inbreeding does to to them :lol:

Care to suggest a few English players performing well at lesser clubs who have earned the right to be given a crack?

Big club players tend to get picked on the grounds that they are getting games for clubs with plenty of other options. It's a flawed concept, but there you go.

Meanwhile, other than Caulker - how many English players can you think of at clubs outside the top 8 who deserve a shot in the national team?

Shawcross? A solid defender, but no more than that. Bit of a butcher too - would he really work in an international setting?Huddlestone? Average - had his chance at Spurs and was moved on.
Johnson? Had 2 great months at the start of this year, but has been extremely inconsistent for the last 2 years other than that brief spell.

Since when do the fans select the team? :?

You should tell Pep Guardiola that Gibbs is an average player.

Really the recent selection of Southampton players aside, Englands selection panel is possibly the worst of any nation going into the World Cup. How average players like Cleverley, Smalling, Caulker, Zaha, Gibbs etc represent a football nation as large as England is beyond me. They carry a big club mentality and players performing well at lesser clubs aren't really given a crack, can't see them getting out of their group this year.

Fans are incredibly harsh and fickle and this is just another example. It's disgraceful they do this and just shows how 'anybody' can start a petition these days.

All players can only try their hardest, playing the best they can within the roles/opportunities they are given. That applies to all, whether you feel love, hate or somewhere in-between for the player. I'm not sure if this petition in poor taste is a more a slight against Cleverly or a slight against Hodgson - The latter they (These fans) clearly don't trust Hodgson's selections or even judgement and their distrust of Hodgson extends so far now to be targeting certain players? Again, players can't dictate whether they are selected except via their own form, but then it's up to the NT managers ofcourse - as we know with our own NT!

AND, in all this, with all the foreigners in the EPL etc... it's little wonder the elite English player pool is soo small at EPL level, that the likes of Cleverly are in with a shot. That is not an indictment on Cleverly or Hodgson, but on the top EPL clubs and their not backing the local young talent more! A long running issue for years now - hardly anything new!
Which is ironic, because once a young English talent DOES feature 'regularly enough' for one of the top English clubs, this case Manchester United, then he 'naturally' comes into consideration for the NT, given how few actually DO feature for these kinds of clubs!!

Edited by GloryPerth: 8/3/2014 01:45:28 PM

Cleverley might be talented and a hard trainer but he is fucking invisible on the pitch. Adds absolutely nothing apart from an extra body in the middle of the pitch and a couple of square balls.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/07/david-moyes-tom-cleverley-online-petition-england-world-cup