The England Thread

[fortworthspur]

walker is still a thoroughbred.

 

[beats1]

Maybe its Chelsea bias but if I was manager I would send mount and chilwell home after their 20min chat with Gilmour

 

[Riandor]

Maybe its Chelsea bias but if I was manager I would send mount and chilwell after their 20min chat with Gilmour

Send…
… them a horse’s head?
… a box of tissues?
… a crossword puzzle book and a get well soon card?

I must know!!!

 

[DogsOfWar]

Strange game for me as I thought first half we looked good when we had the ball in the final third with Grealish/Saka allowing Kane to finally get involved but we struggled to transition through the middle to get it there due, primarily, to Rice's inability to receive the ball under pressure.

Second half I thought we played the ball out, and through the midfield, much better but then dropped off in the final third.

Defensively thought Maguire and Walker showed why they should be first choice picks.

And, despite Sterling scoring again, I'm still not convinced by his all round footballing contribution.

After those 3 performances I think Walker, Maguire, Stones, and Shaw are first choice. With Phillips, Henderson, and Grealish in the middle. Saka, Sterling and Kane as the front three.
I would like to see Foden in for Sterling and Chilwell in for Shaw at some point but it's too late for experimenting with line ups.

And, despite my criticisms of Southgate, he's shown he can see what's wrong with the team (bringing in Saka, Grealish and Henderson to fix issues) so, hopefully, he will be brave enough to stick with the solutions rather than reverting to type.

 

[gavspur]

What Gary Neville said really shows the attitude of Southgate and his guys around him. Something along the lines of

‘4 at the back, with the two holding, let those 6 defend and hope the front 4 can create something. It’s the way they’ve noticed other teams win it.’

I mean, that’s just gonna be awful. Sounds like us under Mourinho last season. Too worried about defending, no fluidity to attack, just hope someone can come up with a bit of skill. Jeez. And I was looking forward to Euros after this shit we’ve had to watch.

4-3-3 or 3-1-4-2 suit this team, same as they did Spurs’ squad, but they never try them out. Southgate is as dull as dishwater, same as Mourinho.

 

[jondesouza]

What Gary Neville said really shows the attitude of Southgate and his guys around him. Something along the lines of

‘4 at the back, with the two holding, let those 6 defend and hope the front 4 can create something. It’s the way they’ve noticed other teams win it.’

I mean, that’s just gonna be awful. Sounds like us under Mourinho last season. Too worried about defending, no fluidity to attack, just hope someone can come up with a bit of skill. Jeez. And I was looking forward to Euros after this shit we’ve had to watch.

4-3-3 or 3-1-4-2 suit this team, same as they did Spurs’ squad, but they never try them out. Southgate is as dull as dishwater, same as Mourinho.

With the quality of player we have I'd be interested to see how we'd do in an attacking Bielsa-style 4-1-4-1 with Phillips holding and two aggressive full-backs. At present we've got a number of players that play well in the spaces between defence and midfield (Foden, Grealish, Mount, arguably Sancho) so wouldn't it make sense to get those players linking up in areas where they can do damage?

 

[ILS]

What Gary Neville said really shows the attitude of Southgate and his guys around him. Something along the lines of

‘4 at the back, with the two holding, let those 6 defend and hope the front 4 can create something. It’s the way they’ve noticed other teams win it.’

I mean, that’s just gonna be awful. Sounds like us under Mourinho last season. Too worried about defending, no fluidity to attack, just hope someone can come up with a bit of skill. Jeez. And I was looking forward to Euros after this shit we’ve had to watch.

4-3-3 or 3-1-4-2 suit this team, same as they did Spurs’ squad, but they never try them out. Southgate is as dull as dishwater, same as Mourinho.

Just go back to Italian 90. We played a half decent game against the Dutch. About a 10 Min spell against Cameroon and our best performance was the semi final. The other performances were turgid. Yet no one ever talks about how average we were.

Euro 96. We played well against Holland and for periods against Germany and Scotland but we were dreadful against Switzerland, Spain and the first half of the Scotland game.

Last World Cup we might have played a combined good 90 mins of football throughout the whole tournament. We finished with a record of only winning 3 matches in 90 mins.

The argument is that this only took us to the Semi final on each occasion but to be honest each of those three semis, we had more then enough chances to win.

There is a perception that you must play great attacking football to win which isn't always true. Denmark, Greece, Italy have won tournaments in my life time and they were not the best footballing sides in those tournaments.

 

[teok]

This photo.

?

 

[ILS]

This photo.

?

I hope they aren't the three players we're getting in exchange!!

 

[southlondonyiddo]

Strange game for me as I thought first half we looked good when we had the ball in the final third with Grealish/Saka allowing Kane to finally get involved but we struggled to transition through the middle to get it there due, primarily, to Rice's inability to receive the ball under pressure.

Second half I thought we played the ball out, and through the midfield, much better but then dropped off in the final third.

Defensively thought Maguire and Walker showed why they should be first choice picks.

And, despite Sterling scoring again, I'm still not convinced by his all round footballing contribution.

After those 3 performances I think Walker, Maguire, Stones, and Shaw are first choice. With Phillips, Henderson, and Grealish in the middle. Saka, Sterling and Kane as the front three.
I would like to see Foden in for Sterling and Chilwell in for Shaw at some point but it's too late for experimenting with line ups.

And, despite my criticisms of Southgate, he's shown he can see what's wrong with the team (bringing in Saka, Grealish and Henderson to fix issues) so, hopefully, he will be brave enough to stick with the solutions rather than reverting to type.

We had qualified and Mount wasn’t available so it gave Southgate a chance to free himself up a little bit!

He'll revert to type next week and Grealish will be back on the bench

 

[Who’s our next manager?]

Maybe its Chelsea bias but if I was manager I would send mount and chilwell after their 20min chat with Gilmour

How they were allowed to hang around in the tunnel for so long is strange

 

[Who’s our next manager?]

Let’s face it unless we play Hungary in the next round football is really coming home, well the team is anyway. France,Germany,Spain???

 

[PLTuck]

Let’s face it unless we play Hungary in the next round football is really coming home, well the team is anyway. France,Germany,Spain???

Spoken like a true Spurs fan ?

 

[Shadydan]

What Gary Neville said really shows the attitude of Southgate and his guys around him. Something along the lines of

‘4 at the back, with the two holding, let those 6 defend and hope the front 4 can create something. It’s the way they’ve noticed other teams win it.’

I mean, that’s just gonna be awful. Sounds like us under Mourinho last season. Too worried about defending, no fluidity to attack, just hope someone can come up with a bit of skill. Jeez. And I was looking forward to Euros after this shit we’ve had to watch.

4-3-3 or 3-1-4-2 suit this team, same as they did Spurs’ squad, but they never try them out. Southgate is as dull as dishwater, same as Mourinho.

This is pretty much Jose football, safety first but this type of football gets you far in knock out tournaments, you don't need to play well to win, you just need to stay in the game and with the kind of forwards England have there's every chance they could nick something, France use the same formula and they were exactly like this under Deschamps in the World Cup - they only scored 3 goals against Denmark, Peru and Australia in the group stage and then really took off when teams started to attack them because it played into their strengths.

I get it Southgate isn't an inspiring manager and everyone wants attacking football - personally I think we should have gone for it more in the group stages but here we are, it's actually hard to criticise him so far apart from the attacking perspective but it seems like there's a logic to what he's doing.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

On the BBC: Manager Gareth Southgate says England aspire to play "champagne football" but that he has been pleased with the defensive solidity they have shown to qualify top of Euro 2020 Group D

Aspire to play Champagne football but constantly serve up Brown Ale.

 

[Marty]

On the BBC: Manager Gareth Southgate says England aspire to play "champagne football" but that he has been pleased with the defensive solidity they have shown to qualify top of Euro 2020 Group D

Aspire to play Champagne football but constantly serve up Brown Ale.

I don't get this quote. England have played the tournament game that @Shadydan outlines above. You bore the hell out of the games against teams who sit deep and then you might attack with more verve against teams who come at you a bit more. It's worked in both the two most recent tournaments, Portugal in 2016 and France in 2018, and Spain in 2010 were prime examples of this.

Just admit that the boring approach is what you were going for and people would hopefully be less on his back.

 

[MotspurHotspur]

I mean, Euro 96 had Baddiel and Skinner, Gazza, 4-1 against The Netherlands, Pearce's penalty, golden goals, Pizza Hut adverts, the old Wembley and more.

Your mate, he's not getting Euro 96 confused with crown green bowls, is he?

Nothing will be a patch on Euro 96, that was a moment in time bit like the 2005 Ashes - now THERE was a contest!

 

[southlondonyiddo]

Southgate might play a similar brand of football to Jose but there is one huge difference

Jose is one of the greatest managers football has ever seen. Southgate in management terms is pretty much a nobody who should never have got the job in the 1st place!

 

[MotspurHotspur]

Strange game for me as I thought first half we looked good when we had the ball in the final third with Grealish/Saka allowing Kane to finally get involved but we struggled to transition through the middle to get it there due, primarily, to Rice's inability to receive the ball under pressure.

Second half I thought we played the ball out, and through the midfield, much better but then dropped off in the final third.

Defensively thought Maguire and Walker showed why they should be first choice picks.

And, despite Sterling scoring again, I'm still not convinced by his all round footballing contribution.

After those 3 performances I think Walker, Maguire, Stones, and Shaw are first choice. With Phillips, Henderson, and Grealish in the middle. Saka, Sterling and Kane as the front three.
I would like to see Foden in for Sterling and Chilwell in for Shaw at some point but it's too late for experimenting with line ups.

And, despite my criticisms of Southgate, he's shown he can see what's wrong with the team (bringing in Saka, Grealish and Henderson to fix issues) so, hopefully, he will be brave enough to stick with the solutions rather than reverting to type.

I think if we had a Eriksen type get and give, intelligent passer to progress through midfield faster (and with better accuracy) we'd be a real force but without that it all becomes a bit long ball. Maybe Harry can be dropped deeper to play that role as at times yesterday he was struggling to keep up with play on the faster breaks.

 

[DogsOfWar]

We had qualified and Mount wasn’t available so it gave Southgate a chance to free himself up a little bit!

He'll revert to type next week and Grealish will be back on the bench

I fully expect Rice to return to the centre as well, but then if we're playing one of the big guns in the next round it might not be a bad thing.