They were relying on excellent last ditch tackles and fouling too often to claim they were in control. Not saying we were amazing but we created pressure. Just poor in the final third.
Sterling and Maguire are first choice, and I don't think Maguire would've made a difference. The rest are not. Belgium are missing Eden Hazard.
It was a Gazza like performance from Grealish ... ok it may sound outlandish on the face of it but he was undeniably brilliant.. I recall Gazza playing all over the pitch and being involved in everything . He should have taken that free kick that Mount wasted ..
having posession isn't control we did nothing Belgium didn't want us to do and we didn't create chances they were half chances at bets doesn't need to be, he has Mertins and KDB up there with him
Agreed.. We had a lot of possession but I can't remember clear cut chances? Grealish excellent as expected, Kane good as everyone else says but no service as usual. Rice garbage, Henderson poor, Walker poor, Dier poor. Since this formation chsnge in the NL we average under a goal a game i think? It has to change. I kinda hope southgaye goes with the defensive formation against Iceland again and we don't win, I'm just sick of it and if we go ahead with it next summer we won't go far at all
Who cares if we had more possession.. it counts for nothing if you have no creativity to create chances
as I said we did nothing they didn't want them to and they had the confidence in their ability to shut us down
Can't argue with any of that. Grealish must have played himself into the team irrespective of injuries with that performance. Ideally I'd like to see him and Sterling backing up Kane - that seems like a three with plenty of variety, and Sterling has rarely let England down. And Saka is perhaps one of the saving graces of this system, as I'm not sure what his role would be in a 4-3-3, nor who we'd have as back-up to Chilwell. But... what is Rice really for in this team? Just another pure defender? How many do we need? Really hoping that Chelsea do buy him and turn him back into a defender. He might actually improve the England squad if he was played further back.
Tactical fouling is unfortunately part of the modern game. I hate it. Refs should card more often to stop it and show reds, but don't. I hate that commentators use the word professional foul. A professional does his job properly, if you have to foul you are not doing your job properly.
So they wanted to foul us twice on the edge of their area? It wasn’t a shut out type display of defensive control lol.
Also better decision making in the final third should have had Belgium in more trouble but it was off in this game. I can think of a few occasions when we went through but chose the wrong option.
exactly at no point after one of the chances he thinks we created did I sit there and think "he HAS to score that" there was never a clear cut chance, Kane had the best chance on the edge of the box and even that, given the keeper against him was a half chance that he snatched at. Our attacking players are let down by the manager, not the system, Belgium played the same system but look how many attacking players they picked in comparison
yes they sent us into a crowded area where they were able to commit a tactical foul before we got into the box they had the game won and knew it so conserved energy for their next match, its called game management
To be honest though, they were lucky they didn’t go down to 10 men, not sure that’s something they really had control over, just more luck than anything else.
You're either trolling or watched a different game. I'm not saying England were great. But Belgium were very average and the ref let them get away with murder.
I didn't say Belgium were good just that they controlled the game, they were as good as they needed to be to beat our inept selection, the 2 early goals removed their need to go out and fly forward
we played right into their hands in the areas they wanted us too, you keep equating possession to control, its not the same thing, Mourinho is a master of it, Martinez did it to Southgate