Issue I have is the midfield after Jude and the cbs Southgate clearly has his favourites when imo, it should be based on form
Bellingham and rice work brilliantly together. We have class fullbacks. Centreback is the only problem
Gareth Southgate said last week he "will have to start looking in the Championship" for left-backs.But why do England need to keep searching for a player to rival Ben Chilwell and Luke Shaw when they already have the perfect candidate in Brentford's Rico Henry?📝 @jaydmharris— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) March 20, 2023
Rico Henry isn't actually very good though, he's in the same boat as Tyrick Mitchell, relatively competent but not great and poor on the ball. Southgate literally just said there's only 4 left backs in the league who are playing and English, of which Henry is obviously one, not that he's somehow overlooking him for championship players.
I'd wager that this squad is solely set up to beat Italy and Ukraine in two of our toughest matches, so I have some leighway for Southgate here. After this round of matches a bit of a refresh is needed though. Looks like the squad is set up for 4-3-3 or a combination of a fouran defence which is encouraging anyway that we have moved on from the 5-2-3.
Engerland will no doubt finish 1st in the Group. Italy have a pretty awlful attacking options, we just called up a Argentine Forward playing in the Argentine league. Very desperate.
Italy are a side that we rarely beat. I don't think the Italian squad has great depth but there is a strong XI there with the midfield being better at ball retention, especially with Veratti in there. Personally I never feel confident about beating them.
Yep, this all day long! I think we will be very lucky if we come away from Naples with a draw but like you say with our problems in midfield I still have Italy as favourites despite their forward issues because we still have big issues also. I will predict something now and you don’t have to be Einstein to work it out but Italy will control the midfield and make it difficult for us to get a foothold in the game…..
I'm confident of a draw but no more than that. In saying that we have improved immensely controlling games last tournament compared to previous ones
People always talk about Germany being our toughest adversary but I actually think it’s Italy. Whilst we rarely beat Germany and France when it matters, I can at least recall us beating them in a few friendlies and obviously we beat the former in the Euro’s. I can’t even recall us beating Italy in a friendly, let alone a tournament. Saying that, I’d take a draw as I believe we are better equipped to outperform them outside of the games between each other given they have struggled against lower ranked opposition in recent years.
Yes, I think with a cautious, disciplined gameplan this Italy team can be kept at bay. A dull draw would be great.
If you look at our record against Germany since the Euros semi final defeat in 1996 it's been dead even. 5 wins a piece and 3 draws with both sides beating each other in a major tournament. There was also the 5-1 victory for England in that time frame too. Our record against Italy in the same period is 7 defeats, 2 victories and 3 draws. The wins were in the Tournoi and a friendly.
At least the France teams we fail to beat have been genuinely good and we generally give them a good game, we approach Italy with a massive inferiority complex and always cede the game to them. We made a mid 30's Pirlo look like a God purely on the basis we showed him a tonne of respect and standing off him, then the next game the Costa Rican midfield made him look like a carthorse purely by virtue of actually bothering to press him. England showing far too much respect and an ongoing inferiority complex has been one of my regular bugbears with the England team- its why we're generally very good at putting away teams we think we're better than, and pretty much always lose to teams we think we're inferior too. Even France when we actually played pretty well, it never seemed like we'd go for the kill and a France sneaking a winner seemed inevitable, not really helped by the substitutions in that case. I have my doubts we'll change in this, I expect a narrow loss to Italy where we are kept by arms length by a average midfield we give too much respect too, and a hard fought win against Ukraine.