It’s all in the blend

The only predictable thing about sport and in particular team sports is its unpredictability.

Trying to blend 11 or 15 individuals into a team that can perform consistently at the highest level is the most difficult aspect of any manager’s job and that is why the best can demand huge salaries for their decision-making skills.
The trap can often be to pick the best individuals rather than the best team players who compliment each other. The England football team is a perfect example of this.
We will never know whether Steve McClaren would have ever picked Wright-Phillips in front of Beckam, Barry in front of Lampard or Heskey instead of Rooney but the suspicion is that it is doubtful. However, no matter how it came about he has stumbled on a combination that at least looked like a team and that’s the first time that can be said for some time about England.
Back to back three-nil wins against Israel and Russia have put them in the frame and at least their destiny is in their own hands.
The real test of McClaren as a manager will come when he names his team to face Russia away when his star players will have returned from injury.
Will he dare leave them out and play the same team or will he retreat to the team he thinks is best and pick them again. Whatever he does, he will be judged, as all international managers are, on the result and not how he got there.
He deserves praise for handling the pressure and coming through these two games with positive results but whether he has the ability to find the right blend in the next game we will have to wait and see.
Scotland, meanwhile, showed what can be achieved by a good team when they play 11 world-class individuals by beating France in Paris to go to the top of their difficult group.
Scotland’s turnaround from the Berti Vogt’s days is nothing more than miraculous and Alex McLeish must take much of the credit for his efforts following on from Walter Smith’s solid foundations.
They have a real chance of qualification from an immensely difficult group and should they manage it then they will rightly be acclaimed as the best ‘team’ in football as the quality of the individuals does not merit the accolade alone. 
Meanwhile, at the Rugby World Cup England seem to be giving a master class on how not to be a team.
In fact, they are performing as if they have not even met each other - let alone played together.
From the moment Andy Farrell was picked at Fly Half and to the final whistle against South Africa this was truly an abject display and offers absolutely no hope for any supporter hoping for a repeat of 2003 glory.
Australia, however, showed against Wales again what a team can actually do even if they are not the best individuals in the world.
They looked highly-motivated and well organised and beat the Welsh by a greater margin than the scoreline suggested.
South Africa also look like a formidable outfit worthy of respect but a spectre hangs over all of them and that is the team in Black.
Not only do New Zealand have the best 15 players in the world they probably have a team ethic to match. It is a lethal combination that comes around very rarely and unless some dramatic transformation takes place it is difficult to see how they cannot win the Webb Ellis trophy.
The England cricket team on the other hand went another way and that was to pick proven performers in domestic 20-20 games and play them at the World Cup. This of course is a perfectly respectable strategy when they play the likes of Zimbabwe who play to the standard of our domestic level but against the Australians it looked totally flawed as the eight wicket drubbing demonstrated. By the time this article goes out on Wednesday they may have proved me wrong against South Africa, India and New Zealand but in all likelyhood the policy will have failed and they will have exited a tournament they went into with high hopes of winning.
Team selection, playing formations and coaching methods are key ingredients to a winning blend and unless all are done perfectly then success at the highest level is always going to be difficult and very few sides overcome these deficiencies.
This is why managers and coaches are vital to performance and in the end the only way to judge them is on their team’s results.

By Patrick Cummings
patrick.cummings@blueyonder.co.uk