Certainly a wake up call. I have no idea why Nketiah has been dropped from that role of focal point. Neither of the other players have convinced really at any point and Nketiah was on a record breaking U19 scoring run before being dumped wider. Some really poor individual displays. How did this Macedonia team lose to Latvia? They looked very well drilled but we were pretty awful.
game over. the turning point was Hirst's horrendous miss. Not too worried though, quality is obvious. The main problem was in central midfield, don't think Embleton brings anything.
Remind me, which of our players are too good for this level, again? One that certainly isn't is Hirst. He has to go!
Mount quite clearly is, but he can't carry the team every game. He was their best performer again here even though he appeared to be a second CF a lot of the time.
I didn't think Mount had one of his better games, in truth, but he wasn't the most below-par. Sancho hardly touched the ball, Hirst's finishing was very poor, Sterling did little to nothing... Foden was a bit hit and miss too, but at least he was trying to inject some urgency and drive, which his teammates seemed unwilling to match. Pretty poor performance all round, I thought. The bright spot for me was Nelson after he came on.
Was just in the middle of writing but then saw your assessment and pretty much agree with this. Sancho looked way off the pace, not sure what was going on with him.
Yeah, I got that you didn't understand what they brought to the table but I did. We dominated every single u17 midfield in the world with this pair.
Foden got bullied quite a bit by their tank of a no.3. Couldn't get round him and lost his balance and hesitated at critical times. Sancho was bright off the bench in the first game but got crowded out a lot today. Can't read too much into one game. But I will say, that in the 10 games so far during this cycle, they've looked very beatable. I think it's 6 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses which is probably as bad of a record as any of our teams have had recently (other than last years U16s). They're constantly churning through players and bar Chalobah, there's a question mark over all of the back 6 outfield players. Sterling/James isn't really anything to worry about cause both are great (i'd take James right now) and we know Sterling can play at this level but the rest is incredibly unsettled. It's tough to speculate on a potential squad for the finals cause inevitably a bunch of players will be pulled out by their clubs. No matter what side we send, we should be competitive against any side. I'm a fan of Hirst though. I think he gets a fair bit of undue stick cause he's a bit of an outsider compared to the stars in the side. The miss was bad, but i've seen him be clinical enough to know it's a blip. His run and pass to play in Mount was probably the best bit of play by any Engand player all game.
as said above you can't read too much into this game in my opinion. i thought we showed glimpses of the quality we have. we have some brilliant footballers, mount, foden , sancho and others. the futures bright.
I know what they "brought to the table" and it wasn't much. The unremarkable Boothe went home early and the overrated McEachran was padding around ineffectually just making up the numbers.
Yeah, it was the Euros when he went home. That's the problem with being so unremarkable. So easy to forget he's actually there. It's been the same in recent matches when watching him. I have to keep reminding myself he's on the pitch.
I'd be interested to know how many of his 386 minutes for Spurs that you'd managed to catch this season.
I haven't kept a record of how many minutes. To be honest I've never kept such a record. But from memory, I have watched every televised appearance of Spurs in the CL u19s and when Spurs were outclassed by Chelsea in the youth cup, for starters. (I will have reported on some on here) How much have you seen him for Spurs. I'll be interested to know.