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Fleet Street's Verdict: Give Up On Gerrard & Lampard

The scribes in attendance at Wembley saw enough to declare that Fabio Capello should admit defeat in his apparent wish to pair Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in midfield...

'FOR the first half it was echoes of Macedonia two years ago rather than Croatia last month but England got it right in the end. With a 100% record at the top of their World Cup qualifying group, they approach Wednesday's more demanding test in Belarus in good heart.

'England were poor throughout the first 45 minutes, when they failed to get a shot on target, and judgment should probably be reserved on whether their Wembley complex is a thing of the past but as their unsung opponents tired they waxed stronger, rattling in five in the second half. Wayne Rooney, man of the match, contributed two of them and much more besides.

'Easy? Not entirely, but it would be churlish to complain about 5-1 any time, anywhere' - Joe Lovejoy, The Sunday Times.

'THERE ARE two ways of looking at England's victory over Kazakhstan at Wembley. The straightforward view is that the superior team took their time to sap the energy of enthusiastic but underpowered rival but, once that happened, everything that followed was inevitable.

'It wasn't a great England performance, or a bad one, but one in which the team's relentlessness was always going to earn its reward.

'The alternative view is that when a young Kazakhstan side had the energy to match England's physical advantages, all the old weaknesses were on show and the tough questions weren't satisfactorily answered. Can Emile Heskey ever score enough to justify his position as the attacking spearhead? Can England succeed with anything other than a standard four-four-two?' - David Walsh, The Sunday Times.

'Yet over the 90 minutes their worthiest contributor was Frank Lampard, who outshone Steven Gerrard on another occasion which testified to their incompatibility.

'...He may be tempted to persevere with 4-4-2 and that would entail Lampard or Gerrard being left together in the middle; or one of them being pushed wide to accommodate Gareth Barry; or one being dropped, in which case the coach's hard eye would have to alight on Gerrard. It seems crazy: the Liverpool captain, though a more complicated character than Rooney, has himself become the next best thing to a great footballer. On his return to the national side, however, Gerrard lacked both conviction and the team-sense of Lampard.

'Capello, who had insisted they could blend (and they did once, when Gerrard held in a friendly against Brazil here in Steve McClaren's time), now has to decide. Given Gerrard's pace and individual ability, logic would suggest a switch to one of the flanks. But Gerrard, by his own admission, prefers a central attacking role and he can be a moody soul. Maybe Capello should conduct one more experiment by asking Gerrard if he were willing to do as Rooney sometimes does for Manchester United and play wide with enthusiasm' - Patrick Barclay, The Sunday Telegraph.

'While Capello's decision to reinstate the fit-again Gerrard for today's game against Kazakhstan, the most laughably inept 5-1 win you will ever see, was just about explicable, the decision to Play-Doh a formation that had just produced a 4-1 victory in Croatia to accommodate these two charlatans was bewildering. As a consequence England were so limited going forward that, having been cheered on to the pitch in an atmosphere so euphoric that it felt only a naff pop song away from Euro 96, they were booed off at half-time as the vicious circle of offensive witlessness that defines English football kicked in again.

It's clear that, if Gerrard and Lampard are to work, it will be in a 4-3-3 formation, as envisaged by Jose Mourinho when he tried to buy Gerrard. But this is unlikely given their limited technical ability and incessant mediocrity at international level and, when it means compromising England's one world-class attacking talent - the still criminally underrated Wayne Rooney - it is impossible to justify. And when England changed to 4-4-2 in the second half they scored five. Like, duh!' - Rob Smyth, The Guardian.

'When Owen Hargreaves returns to international duty, one feels Capello still may have a decision to make about Gerrard and Lampard. He possibly considered making it at half-time, but opted instead to replace Barry with Shaun Wright-Phillips, switch to 4-4-2 with the substitute on the left wing, and ask Gerrard to stay back.

'It did not work to the extent that Gerrard and Lampard could soon be seen tripping over themselves in central midfield in the manner we have seen many times before, and that neither of them looked particularly comfortable playing the narrow waist of a formation that often resembled 4-2-4. Even playing in that way, it was Wes Brown who provided the cross for Rooney to score the first of his two goals, the only one from open play' - Paul Wilson, The Observer.

'Steven Gerrard would play in his best position; the position where his future in the England team lay. He would play in the position he was told to and get on with it. It was time for him to be both disciplined and dominant. Or so Fabio Capello, who knew what that role was, had told us.

'Unfortunately, for the first-half, that position appeared to be no man's land. Neither one thing nor the other, Gerrard dropped left, right, and deep and, at times, just dropped out of the game. Not disinterested but certainly disengaged. Oh what to do with Stevie G? Capello had changed his formation, more than his personnel, to accommodate thefit-again midfielder.

'It was an awkward match for Gerrard. He must have felt like the gatecrasher at a party after the events in Croatia last month when the team had performed so brilliantly without him.

'Loose in possession, off the pace and often by-passed, he had a poor first half with Lampard faring a little better. Capello had stationed Barry behind the pair but they did not co-ordinate, did not communicate. They were simply too far apart. There were often 40 yards between them, almost as if they were polar opposites, repelled by each other's presence.

'They strayed, sometimes offside, sometimes too far away from play. It was both con-gested and barren, and the build-up became painfully slow and painful to watch' - Jason Burt, The Independent.

'At least there now can be no doubting the ability of Fabio Capello to deliver results for England. His team seem to be growing in confidence and stature as they followed up last month's thrashing of Croatia with an emphatic 5-1 victory over Kazakhstan at Wembley last night.

'England went one better than the 4-1 win in Zagreb, yet two late goals had provided an unmerited gloss on a performance which, at times, was laboured and undisciplined and in which Kazakhstan had troubled England for long periods in the second half' - Rob Draper, The Mail on Sunday.