What exactly are England’s chances in Euro 2012?

Every man and his dog have an opinion about the coming European Championships. With the squads and groups announced, expectations are unusually low this year. This is possibly due to a new manager, a largely generally younger squad and cumulatively poor previous international performances.

Gareth Barry’s recent replacement in defence, Phil Jagielka, has said this is in fact beneficial to the England side.

“It will be better for the squad if there’s less expectation in this case. I’m sure if we win a game we will be favourites and, if we lose, we will be a waste of space. We haven’t won anything for a number of years and maybe that’s because we didn’t deserve to. Hopefully this time we can perform better.” (Source: BBC News Website)

Jagielka touches on an often overlooked point; an intrusive media will certainly not help England’s chances of having a successful Euro 2012 campaign. Whether the attitude of the media is distracting, pressurised, agitating or simply over hyped, such strong outside influences will affect even the most focussed of athletes.

The underlying problem with England squads in the past has been that many of the high calibre players do not work well together. Certainly in the last world cup tournament, the players simply did not gel. This coupled with the completely different dynamic between Premiership football and the international arena makes for a hugely inconsistent style of play. Hopefully this year, manager Roy Hodgson will enforce a particular style of play for the England squad to follow- well organised and hard to break down. As a very defensive minded manager, his priority will be to provide an impenetrable back line that can act as the platform from which to coordinate midfield play and attacks.

Despite this, SkyBet are certainly giving England a fair chance of success in regard to the Euro 2012 betting, with comparatively optimistic odds.

England is backed at 13/8 to win their group outright, tied with France. Bearing in mind the potential threat from both France and Sweden in particular, these are seemingly generous odds.

Germany is the favourite outright championship winner at 3/1, with England at 10/1. Again, considering Italy is backed 12/1, Portugal at 18/1 and France are tied with England on the same bet; they are certainly ranked amongst the top contenders this year.