England in the European Championship 1992
Squad Records

Most of the press harangued Taylor throughout the tournament, accusing him of confusion and indecision.  The criticism was somewhat unfair and its tone and intensity entirely unfair.  The spate of injury withdrawals, coupled with the uncertainties surrounding them, played havoc with Taylor’s plans and forced most of the changes he made in personnel, positional assignments and formation as he grappled with difficulties that would have challenged and perhaps proven insurmountable to managers much more experienced in international tournament play.  The other changes he made were prompted by England's failure to score, first against Denmark and then against France.

Taylor delayed announcing his lineup for the opener against Denmark until the last moment possible, an hour before the match, reticence which was then unusual in an England manager and which a good part of the press, denied their customary pre-match story, greeted with hostile scepticism.  The fact was that Taylor was uncertain who would be available to him and, accordingly, waited to name his team. 

Injuries explain why, after extolling the virtues of a sweeper system at length at a press conference, Taylor used a flat back four against Denmark, an apparent contradiction which earned him scorn in the press.  Without Wright, who had played well when Bobby Robson suddenly decided to use him as a sweeper at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Taylor had no player he felt comfortable deploying in that role.

Injuries also explain why Taylor used central defender Keith Curle at right back, where he was terribly out of place in what must have been a confidence-shattering experience.  Having lost three right backs, Taylor had no right backs left in the squad.  He recognized the mistake; he took Curle off in favour of winger Tony Daley in the 62nd minute and had Trevor Steven, the pick of England’s midfield in this match, move to right back. 

Against France, Taylor dispensed with the need for a right back, switching to three central defenders and a sweeper instead of a flat back four to deal with one of Europe’s most potent attacking forces.  He had used the sweeper system successfully when England beat France 2-0 in a friendly match at Wembley in February.  He shifted midfielder Carlton Palmer to sweeper, brought in David Batty to bolster central midfield and played Andy Sinton, more comfortable on the left, as a right wingback, while resting Paul Merson, who had sustained an ankle injury against Denmark.  Shearer, who had performed well and scored on his debut against France in February, replaced Smith at the front.

Finally, against Sweden, Taylor reverted to the more familiar flat back four, moving midfielder David Batty to right back and returning Palmer to midfield.  He sacrificed Steven, who had been perhaps England's most consistent player, in favour of attacking width from Daley on the right and Sinton on the left.  He played Platt well forward in support of Lineker instead of a second centre forward--a change that produced England's only goal in the tournament--and brought in Neil Webb in an effort to improve distribution in the midfield.

Despite these match-to-match changes in formation, personnel and positional assignments, six squad members played every minute of England's three matches--Chris Woods in goal, Stuart Pearce, Martin Keown and Des Walker in defence, David Platt in midfield and Palmer in midfield/defence--and a sixth, Gary Lineker, started all three matches.  Where Taylor had no injury problems, he had no problem making decisions and sticking to them.  Coping with selection, positional and formation difficulties arising from injuries is, of course, a basic part of the manager's job, yet it remains unfortunate that the luckless Taylor should have had to confront so many of them at his first and only final tournament.

Other than the injured Wright and backup keeper Nigel Martyn, two squad members did not play during the tournament: Nigel Clough, who usually played as a withdrawn centre forward for his club side and was listed as a midfielder on this squad, and left back Tony Dorigo, who had also had to be patient at the 1990 World Cup, where he did not get a game until the last, third-place match against Italy.

The tournament marked the final international appearances for six players:  Lineker (80 caps/48 goals), Steven (36/4), Webb (26/4), Smith (13/2), the unfortunate Curle (3/0) and Daley (7/0), who, after Platt had opened the scoring, muffed two wonderful opportunities to send England two up against Sweden. 

Notes

England scored only one goal in three matches.  The tournament was a relatively low-scoring affair at the group level.  Still, it was a sad performance from England's forwards.

Much had been expected of Gary Lineker, who had announced he would retire from international football at tournament's end and take a six-month sabbatical before joining a new club in a new league, Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan.  He had led all scorers with six goals at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and added another four at the 1990 World Cup in Italy to join the top all-time World Cup scorers.  And he had managed to score in each of England's three group losses at the 1988 European Championship in West Germany although he had appeared a little slow off the mark and had been, it was later found, suffering from the debilitating hepatitis B virus.  Plainly he thrived in big matches and, on his arrival in Sweden with 48 international goals, he was considered a good bet to break Bobby Charlton's England record of 49 while there.  

Instead, Lineker went scoreless, and manager Graham Taylor terminated this deadliest of striker's superb England career with rude and humiliating abruptness.  With the score still 1-1 and as players, spectators and a worldwide television audience watched in disbelief, Taylor took Lineker off for substitute Alan Smith while there was still almost half an hour to go against Sweden in his 80th international match and ended any chance he had to equal Charlton's record.  England’s chances in this match--and the tournament--went with him.  The entire team appeared to wilt in the wake of this morale-sapping substitution, gave up a second goal as Sweden pressed and went out of the tournament with barely a whimper.

The justification Taylor offered the press sounded truly lame:  his “job was to try and make sure England had a chance of reaching the semi-finals,” and he thought the substitution “was necessary to give us a chance of qualifying” because “[i]t was not Gary's type of game and I wanted someone who could hold the ball for us up front.”  Taylor might have added that Lineker had gone six straight matches without scoring.  Yet Lineker had a proven record in scoring late goals in important matches.  He had scored the late equalizer against Germany in the 1990 World Cup semi-final, for example, and, indeed, had scored the late equalizer in the last qualifier against Poland that got England to Sweden in the first place.  Smith, on the other hand, had scored only twice in 11 appearances. 

It was a terrible blunder, the sort football fans remember for a lifetime.  Thus the chapter devoted to Taylor's tenure in the latest official F.A. history of the England team, under the insincere if not hypocritical title "Best We Forget," proceeds not only to demonstrate that Taylor's errors, and particularly the Lineker substitution, will never be forgotten by those of us who witnessed them, but to ensure that they won't be even beyond our lifetime.  To this day, the Lineker substitution is mentioned in virtually every story that mentions Taylor's England career, no matter what the news peg is.

Although Lineker's substitution was plainly a relatively inexperienced national team manager's momentary insanity borne of desperation in the most trying circumstances, the press, already sceptical at best and hostile at worst, was unforgiving and berated the hapless Taylor for the rest of his tenure.  In press eyes, he now could do nothing right.  Lineker's ending was the beginning of the end for Taylor.      

As one star faded, another emerged, although it was not immediately apparent.  Youngster Alan Shearer failed to score on his European Championship debut.  Eight years on, he would occupy second place on the all-time European Championship goalscoring chart.  

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PY/CG