By Soccernet staff
Steven Gerrard feels Fabio Capello is the right man for
England
Steven
Gerrard has warned that sacking
Fabio Capello
would be a "crazy" and "knee-jerk" reaction amid mounting
press pressure.
England qualified for the World Cup in some style under Capello
and the Italian had enjoyed widespread support in the media prior
to the tournament, but the dismal showing in South Africa has led
to calls for him to be replaced by an Englishman.
It is a similar situation to that which followed the 2006 World
Cup failure under Swedish coach Sven-Goran Eriksson and, given that
Capello has won Serie A five times, La Liga twice and the Champions
League once, Gerrard feels there is no English coach available who
can compare.
"It's important Fabio is still given a chance," he said. "Who
out there, that's an English manager, has the CV Fabio Capello has
got? It would be a knee-jerk reaction to sack a manager after one
bad tournament then think everything will be rosy when you start
with a new guy and we'll go on and win the Euros. That's crazy.
It's crazy to think it's as easy as that.
"I wanted him to stay. I have a lot of belief in him. To be
honest, I don't know if everyone's totally, 100% behind him because
I can't control what's going through every player's mind, but I've
not seen or heard anything to make me think they're not.
"Everyone's desperate to put things right together. There's a
lot of blame going towards the manager, but it was the players who
underperformed out there at the World Cup. People talk about
tactics and stuff, but there's only so much a manager can do -
players have to deliver and the players never delivered in
Africa.
"Everyone knows in football that the manager usually gets the
blame if things don't go well but, for me, we should get behind
him."
There have been calls for Capello to make changes - including
abandoning his 4-4-2 formation and changing his approach to
man-management - but Gerrard says the Italian is unmoved by the
talk.
"Criticism doesn't seem to affect him," he said. "He's not
changed. His routines are similar, training's similar. We've been
through the mistakes we made and the things we need to do to
improve.
"He has a lot of experience and he's handling it quite well.
It's up to the players to ease the pressure and take the focus off
him and make us a better team, more successful."
England take on Bulgaria at Wembley on Friday in their first
Euro 2012 qualifier before heading to Switzerland on Tuesday, and
Gerrard believes England need to rebuild their morale with two
victories.
"Hopefully we can get two good results and start slowly building
for the future," he said. "It's a similar situation to when we
didn't qualify for the Euros under Steve McClaren, which was a low
moment. It's going to take time to recover.
"Hopefully the booing is behind us now and we can give a good
performance. We certainly have the exciting players in the squad to
get off to a winning start. We qualified really well for the World
Cup playing good attacking football and, if we can put in a good
performance and take maximum points, we will go into the next game
with confidence."
Meanwhile, Bulgaria coach Stanimir Stoilov says his side will
not just be looking for a point against England.
"We are not coming to Wembley just to defend," he said. "In a
game like this, a win for us would be the perfect result but we
hope not to lose. We have to fight to achieve that goal but we will
try to play football and, in a game like this, you never know."