Jamie Vardy's Having a Party

He’s done it! Jamie Vardy has finally completed his journey from non-league to Premier League legend by successfully scoring 11 games on the bounce to beat the previous record of 10 set by Ruud Van Nistelrooy. Jamie Vardy was well and truly having a party last Saturday and everybody was invited!

~ To be fair I say his journey is complete but I’m still praying for him to have a successful international career and win England the Euro’s, or even better the World Cup ~

Apparently well over 26,000 people tweeted the Leicester strikers name the exact minute after the goal, me included in that. I was sat in the pub talking to a mate only to look round at the exact moment Vardy slipped the ball past De Gea and the pub f*cking erupted! cheers, hugs and then of course the chant started “Jamie Vardy’s having a party, he’s bringing vodka and some Charlie!” It was brilliant to see.

The career that this lad has had is enough to make any semi-professional or amatuer player think they still have a chance of making it to the big leagues. He is even setting up his own academy to give non-league players a chance to be spotted by professional clubs, even if it turns out no players he finds are good enough for that step up it has to be said that he is still doing an amazing thing for English football.

I hope this kid is remembered for everything he has done in his career once he’s retired in the same way that Van Nistelrooy was. I was speaking with an older team mate of mine in the pub, he spoke of how great Ruud was as a player, that he was undefendable in many games he played for Man United and that he is still one of (if not the) best strikers the Premier League has ever seen.

Now I’m not going to say that Vardy will be revered in the same way Van Nistelrooy was but I’d like to think that it's not just Leicester fans that remember him in 30 years time. That he was a great player who didn’t play for one of the top four clubs, like Kevin Phillips or Matt Le Tissier or Emile Heskey (...or maybe not Heskey)

~ For people who will inevitably call me stupid for relating Vardy to Le Tissier, I’m saying I want Vardy to be remembered like Matt not that he is just as good of a player ~

Speaking of Matt Le Tissier and Kevin Phillips though got me thinking of great English players who were never given a proper shot at the England national team. It’s shocking that a player of Le Tiss’ quality only had 8 caps for England, what’s even more shocking is when you compare that to Carlton Cole’s 7…

I understand that at that point there was the likes of Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham, Les Ferdinand, etc. But to leave out a man who more or less single handedly kept Southampton in the Premier League year on year is baffling.

~ I’ve gone away and re-read this and I feel I’m being a little harsh, there was so much quality at that time that if you dropped any of them you’d be making the wrong decision in someone’s eyes ~

I asked at the pub with England’s current strikers, would you play Wayne Rooney? A resounding ‘NO’ was the answer. Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy are in the form of their lives scoring a combined 22 goals so far this season in the Premier League. Whereas Wayne Rooney has scored 2 goals all season and doesn’t look to be a scratch on his former ‘England saviour’ role. Should it matter that he is England captain?

Should England’s team be based around form and not names? If this was the case then surely lads like Vardy, Barkley, Butland and even uncapped Scott Dann should be the first names on the team sheet.

~ Included Dann because I rate him very highly and also he is statistically one of the Premier Leagues top performing defender ~

I’m sure there are as many different opinions of the England team as there are hairs on Steve McClaren’s head but I still wouldn’t mind hearing what you guys think, please feel free to comment below or tweet me @ThePenaltyKing1. What would your England team be? Would you go for players in form or would you go for the ‘world class’ players and pray that they show their class on the day?

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Cheers for reading.