Interesting and fair point. I agree Courtois is the only other contender, but Pickford's save against Uribe, saves v sweden, penalty saves v columbia, and that save against munier at the end of what would have been the move of the tournament were different class. Plus his distribution was better than Courtois. Of course I am biased though . If he does win he'll be only the second english golden glove after Banks 66. Would give us a massive lift to have a golden boot and golden glove winner in a team going into the euros
Yes. We beat all the teams we are better than and lost to all the teams we are worse than. At Euro 2016 we failed to beat Russia, Slovakia and Iceland and only won the game against Wales by the skin of our teeth.
I think we will find out how successful this tournament actually was for us after the next Euros. If it is used as an example of how, why and what areas we need to improve in then it may be looked back upon as a turning point. Gained experience, competed well in all knockout games and won a penalty shoot out. Or it could go the other way like Hodgson's reign when he seemed to learn absolutely nothing about his poor preparation for the 2014 WC and made the same errors at Euro 2016. I had doubts about Southgate before the tournament and they haven't really gone away. He isn't very adaptable and like Hodgson usually makes things worse when he makes changes; rarely if ever making things better. I guess if we are going with English coaches we are always likely to have one of the poorest coaches tactically in a tournament though. It's just that even if you have a struggling team a very minor tactical tweak can allow you to eek out a win rather than a draw. We have been awful under Hodgson and Southgate at these type of things.
Just on the subject of youth prospects this appeared on my YT front page... He makes an interesting point about that specific guy but, also, he points out that young 'wonderkids' often go the way of the dodo.
It might actually be fake because I can’t find it on their twitter at all. So I’ll take it down for now.