Do I Not Like That!?

Graham Taylor - An Impossible Job
Graham Taylor was widely ridiculed while he was manager of the England national team during the early 90s. Admittedly he did inherit a generally weak set of players to choose from – players who were coming to the end their careers or just starting – and there was not the depth of players to choose from that other managers have perhaps had. He was also unfortunate that circumstances conspired against him in some cases, for example some bizarre refereeing decisions in the game against Holland that England went on to lose.

During the period of attempting to qualify for the World Cup in the USA in 1994, a film crew followed him around and filmed his coaching techniques for a documentary entitled Graham Taylor – An Impossible Job. It does not show Taylor or his coaching team in a particularly great light – odd tactical decisions, confusing player instructions and arguing with journalists in press conferences – but it gives a fascinating insight into the world of international football management, one that now the years have passed you can laugh at.

You can watch the whole programme on Google Video at the following link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7941330900744785719&ei=WdfASbCbJoGw-Aa3muTFAQ&q=graham+taylor
It is about 50 minutes long and is well worth the viewing.

For what it is worth, I quite like Graham Taylor – his analysis of games on television and on the radio is often refreshing and enlightening, and perhaps he was harshly done by the media and British public while he was England manager.