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The England World Cup Thread

dontcallme

SC Supporter
Mar 18, 2005
33,988
81,938
Anyone else finding all the talk about Southgate rotating players boring? If you actually look at the team from the previous match a lot of the changes make sense:

Pickford - Played
Trippier - Rested. Came off with a slight injury against Panama.
Walker - Rested, but loads of people were saying he shouldn't be playing at CB anyway.
Stones - Played, but taken off with an injury.
Maguire - Rested.
Henderson - Rested.
Loftus Cheek - Played. Worth mentioning that he played against Panama because of Dele's injury, so giving Dele more time to recover makes sense.
Lingard - Rested
Young - Rested, but most people were saying Rose should have played anyway.
Sterling - Rested, but loads of people were saying Rashford should start anyway.
Kane - Rested. Whether you agree with this one or not, you should at least be able to see why he'd want to protect our main man.

So people got the changes that they wanted while the manager rested players with injury concerns and he's still getting stick for it.

Bored of rotation discussion so write a long post discussing rotation ?

I think it was the right decision. We play again in less than a week, the players needed a bit of a break.
 

hughy

I'm SUPER cereal.
Nov 18, 2007
31,842
56,935
No one will know whether it's the right decision until Tuesday, but you can guarantee the debate will rage on.
 

Marty

Audere est farce
Mar 10, 2005
39,888
62,568
No one will know whether it's the right decision until Tuesday, but you can guarantee the debate will rage on.
I fear the only way Southgate will be vindicated is if we reach the semis. An exit to Colombia will be a disaster for him, and an exit v Sweden or Switzerland will bring cries of "what was the point then?"
 

fluffybunnyuk

Well-Known Member
Oct 16, 2017
2,210
2,473
With 2 days recovery ,all those players who played will get very little training in. Those players that were rested are probably out now on the training ground being shown by a Mr H. Kane how to find the back of the net. With all that training time for the main team, I expect to see good free kicks (direct), good set pieces n corners, and players with better shooting accuracy.
If i see that in the colombia game I know it was worth it. If I dont....meh
 

riggi

Well-Known Member
Jun 24, 2008
48,487
104,720
IMG_2398.JPG
 

Spurs 1961

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
6,665
8,739
No one will know whether it's the right decision until Tuesday, but you can guarantee the debate will rage on.

I will laugh if we get stuffed by Colombia and Belgium go on to beat Brazil. Germany no doubt thought beating South Korea would be a ckewalk! Shame about yesterdays game for the paying public. It must be bad to go all that way and see a meaningless reserve match. Still clearly Belgium reserves are much better than England reserves.
 

nailsy

SC Supporter
Jul 24, 2005
30,536
46,628
Bored of rotation discussion so write a long post discussing rotation ?

I think it was the right decision. We play again in less than a week, the players needed a bit of a break.

Good point. I should've said the criticism of rotating the players.
 

chinaman

Well-Known Member
Jul 19, 2003
17,974
12,423
I will laugh if we get stuffed by Colombia and Belgium go on to beat Brazil. Germany no doubt thought beating South Korea would be a ckewalk! Shame about yesterdays game for the paying public. It must be bad to go all that way and see a meaningless reserve match. Still clearly Belgium reserves are much better than England reserves.


And Belgium's 1st 11 is better than England's 1st 11.
 

spursfan77

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2005
46,680
104,957
I personally rate Rashford a lot, especially over Sterling but yesterday's debacle did him no favours after seeing him miss that great chance which he should have put past Courtois. He has probably blown it now.

I think Rashford is just average and still living off his breakout season. He constantly makes the wrong decision time and again.
 

1882andallthat

Well-Known Member
Feb 2, 2009
2,821
4,157
Unfortunately Southgate was dammed if he did and dammed if he didn't. The same people and the same journalists who are criticising him for doing this would be the same people who would have criticised him for playing HK or bringing him on to get something out of this game by saying it was an unnecessary risk. They just enjoy criticising for the sake of it, and they would have said it was a tactical error topping the group and potentially going into the half of the draw that is perceived as being more difficult. Could you have imagined all the fuss and criticism that would have come his way and rightly so had HK been brought on and / or had played and picked up an injury. We all remember the time last season when Poch kept HK on too long after being 4-1 up against Liverpool and he picked up an unnecessary injury late on in the game and it cost us dearly in some of the games after this.

Let's cut him some slack, the time for criticising will be if it backfires and we go out in the last 16. My view is that if you are English and I am is to enjoy the fact that we have qualified very comfortably, and in comparison to the dross that we have had to endure for what seems like an eternity of failure in tournaments that's got to be better than we have been used to. If it works and we go far then those who have come out too soon with a barrage negative criticism should have the good grace to own up and say they got it wrong and take the criticism that should come their way instead.

He may just have played a blinder, FFs let's wait and see.
 

LexingtonSpurs

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2013
13,456
39,042
Unfortunately Southgate was dammed if he did and dammed if he didn't. The same people and the same journalists who are criticising him for doing this would be the same people who would have criticised him for playing HK or bringing him on to get something out of this game by saying it was an unnecessary risk. They just enjoy criticising for the sake of it, and they would have said it was a tactical error topping the group and potentially going into the half of the draw that is perceived as being more difficult. Could you have imagined all the fuss and criticism that would have come his way and rightly so had HK been brought on and / or had played and picked up an injury. We all remember the time last season when Poch kept HK on too long after being 4-1 up against Liverpool and he picked up an unnecessary injury late on in the game and it cost us dearly in some of the games after this.

Let's cut him some slack, the time for criticising will be if it backfires and we go out in the last 16. My view is that if you are English and I am is to enjoy the fact that we have qualified very comfortably, and in comparison to the dross that we have had to endure for what seems like an eternity of failure in tournaments that's got to be better than we have been used to. If it works and we go far then those who have come out too soon with a barrage negative criticism should have the good grace to own up and say they got it wrong and take the criticism that should come their way instead.

He may just have played a blinder, FFs let's wait and see.

I agree with the premise - damned if he did, damned if he didn't - but not how you got there. I don't think people have been inconsistent on this at all. One group of people said: "Go for the win, build continuity and confidence" - those people are the ones criticizing Southgate today, but would have been happy if Southgate made 2-3 changes and played a full squad and won the game (obviously no guarantees they would have won...)

The second group of people is a mix of: "Rest your starters, play the reserves to keep everyone fresh" and, "We really want to finish 2nd in the group for an easier path to the semi-finals!". Those people are generally happy today, but would have been angry if Southgate burned out the starters and were forced to face Brazil in the quarterfinals.


So, Southgate was getting criticized no matter what - but not by the same people.

For Southgate - he needs to win two more matches to justify his decision either way. And, lets face it, he is England's manager, he was going to be criticized for any result short of winning the World Cup...
 

tiger666

Large Member
Jan 4, 2005
27,978
82,214
You're probably right there.

Courtois
Dendoncker
Boyata
Vermaelen
Chadli
Tielemans
Dembélé
Thorgan Hazard
Januzaj
Fellaini
Batshuayi

Versus

Pickford
Walker
Stones
Maguire
Henderson
Trippier
Lingard
Alli
Young
Sterling
Kane

Nah.
 

StockSpur

Well-Known Member
May 20, 2004
4,945
1,537
Dunno why this has become a thing. With VAR clearly not working and refs being so random we are going to get fucked out of this tournament one way or another...
 
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