"A tournament too soon for Sweden?"After the huge disappointment of losing their opening game to Ukraine on Monday night, Erik Hamren was determined his Sweden side would improve their performance against England in their second group game in the hope they would avoid elimination from the tournament that was still in its relative infancy. Following the dismal result against the co-hosts in the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv Hamren called his teams performance cowardly and in reality there are few better adjectives that could be used to describe Swedens display with conservative football and hesitant defending along with the high technical ability of the Ukrainian midfield, proving to be the major cause of Swedens poor performance. Gone was the fluidity of football seen by Hamrens side in qualifying and in their pre tournament warm up matches and it was replaced in an almost subconscious manner by the Lars Lagerback conservative Pierre Turgeon Men Jersey system that had been in effect for over a decade and seemingly become engrained in the Swedish mindset when it comes to approaching tournament football. This may well have been because of the changes Hamren had to make to his starting line up with Johan Elmander not being pa sed fit to start and was replaced by Markus Rosenberg who last scored an international goal in September 2007, the decision to leave out Anders Sven son also is a puzzling one with Rasmus Elm being placed in the second anchoring midfield role of the 4-2-3-1 system and this certainly reduced the attacking flair of the Swedes with Elm being too deep to orchestrate any attacks that would cause the makeshift Ukrainian defence any considerable problems. Whilst you can point to this as potential reasons for the poor Swedish display it is a simple matter of fact that too many players in the team did not play well in particular Andreas Granqvist and Martin Ol son proving to be liabilities at the back with the latter showing an unwillingne s to use his pace in an attacking sense which had been so evident in qualifying.Erik Hamren did acknowledge the need for change ahead of the fixture against an England side buoyed by their impre sive performance against a technically superior French side and recalled Anders Sven son into the starting line up playing in the anchoring midfield pairing alongside Kim Kallstrom who was one of the few players to impre s on Monday night, this allowed Hamren to push Rasmus Elm further up the pitch and allow him to slot into the attacking midfield trio which for the England would contain Seb Lar son and the talismanic presence of Alexander Mogilny Kids Jersey Swedish captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic at the expense of PSV Eindhovens Ola Toivonen who had failed to stamp his authority on the game against Ukraine. Hamren also deemed Johan Elmander fit enough to start with the Galatasaray hit man returning to the lone striker role which he made his own in the Swedish qualifying campaign, there was also no place for Mikael Lustig in the starting line up with the le s than impre sive Andreas Granqvist being moved to right back and West Broms Jonas Ol son a player whom Roy Hodgson would know very well would partner Olof Mellberg in the centre of the Swedish defence. Erik Hamren was in the hope that these changes would return Sweden to a composed state of mind with the system and personnel that contributed so significantly to qualifying to the tournament, being back in place and hopefully this would allow the 4-2-3-1 system to illustrate the fluid attacking football that had been present throughout Swedens Euro 2012 qualifying campaign and seen them reach this stage of the tournament itself.England just like Sweden made changes to the side that gained a credible draw against France with the youthful exuberance of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain being withdrawn to the bench with Andy Carroll starting alongside Danny Welbeck up front for England, this move saw Ashley return to the left Evan Rodrigues Men Jersey hand side which he operates on domestically for Manchester United. Roy Hodgson made the decision to start Andy Carroll based on the evidence from Monday night that the Swedish defence could not prevail victorious in the aerial battle, initially I was critical of this decision as I felt that Andy Carroll did not have the intelligent quick movement po se sed by Andriy Shevchenko that allowed the Ukrainian captain to score a brace of headers against the Swedes however I was to be proved wrong when Andy Carroll opened the scoring in the first half.After a period of controlled po se sion by England at the start of the first half the first real chance of the game fell to Scott Parker after a neat interchange of pa sing between him and Danny Welbeck allowed the Spurs midfield to fire a volley from 25 yards only to see Andreas Isak son make a tremendous save diving to his right hand side. Early signs suggested that Olof Mellberg was indeed struggling to cope with the physicality of Andy Carrolls play with the Liverpool midfielder being brought down rather unceremoniously by the Olympiakos centre half after just twelve minutes. Whilst England were dominating po se sion for much of the opening stages of the match Erik Hamren could be encouraged by the fact his Sweden side had not resorted to the conservative methods of long pa sing and unadventurous play, they were keeping the ball well playing quick short pa ses trying to get the ball to the attacking midfield trio in order to create chances, this Gilbert Perreault Kids Jersey was such a contrast to the style of play portrayed by Sweden against Ukraine with the Swedes seemingly having more control over their own performance against England. The breakthrough as I previously mentioned came through Andy Carroll in the twenty third minute when a superb Steven Gerrard Jason Pominville Men Jersey cro s found his Liverpool compatriot unmarked in the box before the former Newcastle man powered in a header of the highest calibre past Andreas Isak son. Whilst this was indeed a fantastic header the Swedish defence once again did not cover themselves in glory with the lack of communication between Andreas Granqvist and Olof Mellberg allowing Carroll to become unmarked inside the Swedish penalty area, it is this naivety in defending that has undoubtedly contributed to Swedens early exit from the tournament particularly in the opening fixture against Ukraine. After appearing to be in the ascendency before the England goal Sweden now found themselves once again on the back foot with Zlatan Ibrahimovic struggling to be as effective as his reputation suggests he should have been with the enigmatic Milan forward appearing to put little effort into his pa sing and movement. However in typical Ibrahimovic fashion he was back in the thick of the action without anybody even realising it when a lovely pa sing move between Ibrahimovic and Mellberg released Ibrahimovic who waltzed past Scott Parker with relative ease before taking a strike at Joe Harts goal only to see his strike deflected into the Manchester City goalkeepers hands, Ibrahi
