[drewks]

As I've mentioned before the problem is that now every National side wants to play like Spain/Brazil rather than working to their strengths.
The English game was all about passion and tough tackling, however now that has pretty much been removed from the game that leaves us with a void to fill which results in us trying to play "Flairy" football when in reality this is not our strength.

Great point made there devwakey - agree completely.
I've always thought that we - and by that I mean our clubs and more so our COUNTRY - should play to our strengths and not try and imitate the tippy-tappy posession stuff that others have championed, and become very good at.
'Old fashioned' centre forwards, passion, work rate, stamina and speed coupled with skill on and off the ball have always been our strengths and should have a place in today's game, as should tough BUT FAIR tackling; however I wonder whether the 'powers that be' have taken some of these elements out of the modern game with their interpretation of the rules? As far as I know the basic rules that would cover all these have not changed, so why has 'what is generally allowed' changed so much?

Like them or loathe them, TP's Stoke were (moderately) successful playing this game to the extreme for years. I'm not saying that we should all try to emulate that, but IMO there IS a place for the older style of English football in today's game - watered down perhaps but still keeping, and playing to, it's strengths.