Have to give England credit for playing to their strengths. I know fat Sam only had a short spell with the team, but they reminded me a lot of his old Bolton teams with anelka. They just need a real midfield—too bad for us and England jack didn’t make it.
Decent team? Yes. Have they played as a decent team? Nope. Now they face a team with the best defender in the tournament in Varane, a juggernaut MF in Kante and Mbappe, who will tear defenses apart with his pace. Not to mention the heartbreak of losing the Euros on home soil against Portugal in the back of French minds. That and playing 3 straight matches of 120 minutes of football? Croatia have a chance, obviously, but not as good a chance as France.
Tell an England fan their side would be in a WC Semifinal, they'd gladly take it. Right now it hurts, but by Sunday they'll be pleased about how far England went. Anyhow, in 2020 the final of the Euros will be at Wembley. Wouldn't it be nice to finish at Wembley what they started in Russia?
If Southgate and the FA realize that this is the blueprint for England from here on out, they can go far in 2020 and 2022.
England simply couldn't create enough chances from open play. I primarily blame Alli and Lingard for that. That midfield isn't good enough.
Blueprint is to develop better midfielders. The kids that are 17 now will be 21 in 2022 - those players need to develop and get real playing time in the next couple of years
we are … https://talksport.com/football/387140/tottenham-hotspur-transfer-news-ante-rebic/ mine, too. but more likely than either of our pals continuing to enjoy his services at Eintracht or myself liking him at Spurs - or crazy150 at Arsenal, for that matter - is that he'll follow Niko Kovac to Munich.
Yeah the balance of the team is bad with those two together. England just don't have enough quality in central midfield to be a true contender. They can mitigate it to a certain extent but they were definitely exposed today. When AMN is bossing the midfield in four years they'll be world beaters. Kane looked like he had nothing left today--maybe that injury in the Colombia match? Something was off.
What a game peresic had too. Everyone thought raka and modric where going to dominate, but the wide men really stepped up.
England should have taken Shelvey, or risked taking Jack and hope he would revert back to his strong national team form. Southgate could have also shifted his lineup a bit more when it was clear over the last several games that Sterling-Lingard weren't producing. Why not play Vardy-Kane? It seems like the only thing the team worked on was set pieces.
Because Vardy looked hot garbage. Southgates subs were bad the whole knock out phase Trippier was physically finished before 90. Should have come off for Rashford. And Welbeck for Sterling.
Vardy exacerbates all the problems England have. The issue was Alli, not Sterling. I'm not interested in the anti-Raheem conversation; by any metric he was one of England's best attacking players in open play. Sure, he didn't finish, but neither did Kane today, and Raheem more than made up for it with the rest of his performance throughout the tournament. For me Alli was pretty useless. There were a few Tottenham players who I saw as decent players for the first time this tournament--Trippier most notably. I'm still trying to work out Alli. I don't think he's been very good for a while. As for Shelvey or Wilshere, agreed. Either of them would have been significantly better than only using Dier as your CM sub. Dier was...well, he was not good. Brought on to bunker against Colombia and got continually outmaneuvered. He's too slow for me, especially if you're playing him as a single deep-lying player. Not as good a passer as Henderson either. The central midfield can only sustain one of Lingard and Alli and for me Lingard was more valuable. In time I'm fairly hopeful that there's gonna be significant CM quality for England to choose from, and English players are finally being coached by some of the best tactical minds in the world. It's unrealistic to expect England to double up on WC semis but I think in the next couple competitions they will have a decent chance as being contenders. It's the combination of really excellent youth players with the now world class coaching in the Premier League that has me optimistic.
He did. But special shoutout to mandzukic who always seems to score in big games and has massive trophy cabinet to boot I have been lukewarm on him for years but he deserves much praise
Great points Raheem is going to get a lot of flak but he was singularly responsible for stretching the defense
For sure And to begin the tournament I was sort of annoyed with Sterling because it seemed like he was taking up a lot of the same spaces as Alli, but as it went on it felt like it was the other way around.
Sterling made great runs but a lot of the time the passes to him were over hit We need to play Henderson and a deeper cm in the future and then use lingard sterling and Kane as the advanced players or rashford for lingard The shape did not work well with their steroid induced press lol I also thought young was poor most of the tournament bar set pieces, u can t play 5 defenders and none of them left footed. At least rose can provide natural width and cross quicker even if he is an average player Ah well, France would of destroyed us in the final, I do t feel good for Croatia vs them either
My mate was over the other night for some drinks and he is super bummed about the likely exodus beginning obviously with Kovac But such is life for Frankfurt!