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I like the fact that what was being dismissed as a storm in a teacup earlier is now being used as a stick to beat Hodgson, with the hilarious conclusion that if he wasn't English he'd have been sacked. His record is decent, no one expected us to qualify from that World Cup group, and we're top of our group having already played the trickiest game and with a team bereft of experienced players. He's doing fine.

I'll briefly touch on the Sterling thing. Isn't requiring a two day recovery period a fundamental problem in an international team who'll be playing games with two day gaps all through qualifying and just over that when a tournament rolls round?

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I think it's more to do with timing, you would be going into a tournament (relatively) fresh because of the gap between the end of the domestic season and international tournaments.

As an aside, I would imagine that if Micheal Owen hadn't been played to death in his teens and early twenties, he wouldn't have been a complete crock after the age of twenty five.

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The whole 'played into the ground' notion is ridiculous, I can't think of a player off the top of my head who just declined through playing hundreds of matches without some muscle injury that caused a breakdown in his ability.

The problem is that some players just flat out don't recover well from injuries so it's difficult to see how much would have changed in hindsight when you have guys like Owen Hargreaves who was given the best medical treatment for 4+ years and still barely played.

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I've got a big book on Physiology that disagrees with you.

A muscle 'breaks' every time you place it under stress (ie. running), without appropriate recovery time and nutrition, the muscle fibres don't heal properly (they usually heal and are reinforced by new fibres, that's how muscles grow) then eventually the stress placed on the muscle will be too great for the remaining fibres and you get a strain or tear.

Hargreaves broke his leg which led to one of his legs being weaker muscularly than the other, this imbalance lead to overcompensation which in turn lead to tendonitis in his patella tendon, which is a chronic condition. He also said that the treatments he was given at Man United were experimental, didn't work and lengthened his recovery.

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I always find it odd that Michael Owen is mentioned given his real injury nightmares didn't start until he broke his foot in a collision then rushed back for the World Cup. It's not as if it was caused by him playing loads of games.

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I thought when you break a bone, it's stronger once healed. Old wives tale?

Absolute bollocks.

I think someone should find England's best young prospects, lure them into a room and break every bone in their bodies several times over. By the time they've healed for the seventh or eighth time, they ought to be invincible.

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I always find it odd that Michael Owen is mentioned given his real injury nightmares didn't start until he broke his foot in a collision then rushed back for the World Cup. It's not as if it was caused by him playing loads of games.

The cruciate in 2006 was the one that finished him but before that his hamstrings were shot. He played a crazy amount of games as a youngster and for a player who's game was built around speed, like Sterling, that wasn't ideal.

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I always find it odd that Michael Owen is mentioned given his real injury nightmares didn't start until he broke his foot in a collision then rushed back for the World Cup. It's not as if it was caused by him playing loads of games.

The cruciate in 2006 was the one that finished him but before that his hamstrings were shot. He played a crazy amount of games as a youngster and for a player who's game was built around speed, like Sterling, that wasn't ideal.

I definitely think his injuries had been catching up with him before 2006, and his situation might have been more difficult than Sterling's because he was regarded by Sven as undroppable for so long, much like Rooney has been under Hodgson. Owen, to his credit, was usually able to mask his growing athletic shortcomings because he was still one of the best around at getting himself into goalscoring positions, meaning that he could fluff several shots before scoring a winner, leading to many people forgetting all about his earlier errors. By his mid-twenties, his pace, which had previously been his biggest weapon, had declined significantly, and that meant that he became much more of a goal-hanger, and thus less likely to create chances and more likely to wait for them and snap them up. I think it helped that he usually had a pretty decent midfield behind him (although Emile Heskey might not have been the greatest strike partner), but in today's England side, he'd most likely be found wanting.

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I think he also puts it down to poor physio decisions at Liverpool, but regardless muscle injuries barely touched his early Newcastle career, it was the freak foot injury followed by the cruciate after rushing back that finished him for us. No doubt there are lessons to be learned, but Sterling's situation isn't really comparable.

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I always find it odd that Michael Owen is mentioned given his real injury nightmares didn't start until he broke his foot in a collision then rushed back for the World Cup. It's not as if it was caused by him playing loads of games.

The cruciate in 2006 was the one that finished him but before that his hamstrings were shot. He played a crazy amount of games as a youngster and for a player who's game was built around speed, like Sterling, that wasn't ideal.

I hate to bring him up again and maybe it's a difference in physique's or body type's or better conditioning or approach taken by the clubs towards fitness or just luck, but Ryan Giggs played as many if not more as Owen at a similar age, with a similar style of play.

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Man, Liverpool fans are awful.

Oh, and Colly and Mad Jack aren't. Hodgson is doing a decent job, he also was honest answering a question and it is media/stupid fans making a big deal about it.

Not if you believe a lot of the reliable sources that are reporting Sterling didn't even say he was tired, Hodgson decided he was after a series of questions.

I guess people don't understand how awful Roy Hodgson is until you've had to endure him managing a club with genuine expectations.

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Man, Liverpool fans are awful.

I've never seen a set of football fans I wouldn't describe as awful at times.

Roy Hodgson is awful too. Just a big dollop of walking awfulness. He'll be there forever, lowering expectations and playing Hodgeball.

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