England Senior National Team General Discussion Thread

There's certainly no shortage of Irish people that think Rice is overrated. Maybe there's a negative bias against him over there for some reason.

That said, I'd stop short of calling him world class at this point but I don't think he's a too far away from that level. He'll need to win some big trophies for the wider public to recgonise him as such but he hasn't really joined the right club for that.

As an England fan that watches every game we play he's arguably been our best player over the past 3-4 years. Out of all the dual-national battles we've won and lost Grealish, Musiala etc, he's certainly the most important and thankfully it ended in our favour.

 

Its not just Irish people who think he is overrated. Outside of England he isn't rated very highly .
Rice is a very British style played , he has a great engine, he covers lots of ground, he is a great tackler, he has great defensive instincts, he can carry the ball forward.

But the flaws in his game are very apparent if you look closely .

He doesn't play with his head up , he doesn't scan the pitch around him so that when he receives the ball he doesn't know what to do with it . He takes to many touches on the ball so he slows the game down , he can't play one touch football.

When he is pressed as he was in the game against the USA he wasn't able to get turned on the ball and make a forward pass

Even if rice has time on the ball he doesn't have the vision to play a line breaking pass. Rice can play a long ball when he is under no pressure . I don't think he can do it when he is under pressure.

 

Your reminder that there’s really no point in engaging with greengrass, he doesn’t believe what he’s saying about Rice.

he also appears to troll the Irish YBIG forum so I’m not sure it’s really an Irish thing rather than a sad middle aged man.

 

I thought that hanging the future success of Ireland footall team on Andrew Moran was slightly eccentric given his 1 assist and 0 goals in his last 15 appearances in The Championship. He may be decent prospect but it seemed odd.

 

He is gone off the boil at the moment . He had a very good start . He has 7 assists in the championship this season.

 

Declan rice has been way better than I thought he would for Arsenal

he’s playing multiple roles over the course of his season. Single pivot, in a two and also sitting alongside an iwb and also getting forward

he’s also been taking a lot of set pieces lately

he’s much better than anyone thought he would be that follows Arsenal

 

Funnily enough he spends his time trolling the Irish fans about how overrated Moran is

 

My criticism of him is that he doesn't play with his head up. So that he doesn't know what to do with the ball before it comes to him . He can't play one touch.

He can't get turned on the ball to make a forward pass particularly when under pressure.

Maybe he has improved since I seen him play for England but when ever he has played for England all the flaws I have mentioned are massively apparent.

 

Thats bollocks. He's very aware. He's also very quick moving the ball. Also the nonsense about English style players is like from 10 years ago. English players are far more technical now

 

As a Blackburn supporter Moran has been awful for months

 

Again nonsense. He's been immense for England. Without his defensive qualities and ability to break the lines the likes of Bellingham wouldn't be able to express themselves so freely. U must be trolling

 

I like Reed, he presses well and can play a pass. But he is not press resistant at all. Really doesn't make sense. Annoyingly he has actually been decent when he has played. But Silva plays Pereira all the time, so Cairney drops to CM and takes Reed's spot.

 

You know I saw that foul live on TV and didn't think it was. But Mainoo pulls the Luton player back, takes the ball and then cleans him out. Its a foul and yellow because of the pull back.
On the whole was an impressive performance.

 

I have seen a bit when he played Chelsea and he was impressive there as well.

 

I wonder if he's on a Scottish forum somewhere with a Welsh flag next to his name claiming Gaby Agbonlahor said that Ethan Ampadu is the next Alan Hanson.

 

Walker, Stones and Foden start for Man City. Carson and Lewis are on the bench.
Mee and Toney start for Brentford. (Baptiste) and Lewis - Potter are on the bench,

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-stars-mix-Gareth-Southgates-Euros-squad.html

 

Brazil have announced Allison will be absent due to injury for the next international meet up including the match at Wembley.

 

Liverpool are interested in Crystal Palace's 23-year-old England defender Marc Guehi. (Telegraph - subscription required)

Paris St-Germain are targeting Napoli's 25-year-old Nigeria striker Victor Osimhen, Manchester United's 26-year-old England forward Marcus Rashford and Barcelona's 19-year-old Spain midfielder Gavi this summer. (i)

Rashford has long been admired by PSG and the club's president Nasser Al-Khelaifi. (MEN)

Manchester United are considering reigniting their interest in Bayern Munich's 30-year-old England striker Harry Kane and Barcelona's 26-year-old Netherlands midfielder Frenkie de Jong this summer. (Football Transfers)

I do wonder if Kane will stay at Bayern under a new manger or push to leave - there has been mentions that Tuchel was a big part of why he accepted a move there

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...o-steer-kalvin-phillips-to-west-ham-sdx2rxk5d


Why Gareth Southgate was right to steer Kalvin Phillips to West Ham

Inescapably, the midfielder is nowhere near the level required for Euro 2024. But Jordan Henderson at Ajax? By comparison, the England manager can’t really know

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He’s a smart guy, Gareth Southgate. So when Kalvin Phillips consulted him on where he should go in the January transfer window, he turned him off Juventus.

“Gareth said he wasn’t going to tell me what to do, but said the Premier League is a lot more difficult, and more competitive,” Phillips recalled. “He said to be playing in the Premier League versus playing anywhere else — it’s just a little bit of a step down in quality. So, yes, he influenced me to stay in England.”

And Southgate was right. The Premier League is a far higher standard than Serie A right now and, in a handful of games for West Ham United, Phillips’s deterioration while on the periphery for Manchester City has been exposed — at fault for a goal against Bournemouth, at fault for a goal against Manchester United, unable to get in the team on occasions, and then off the pace against Nottingham Forest, resulting in a red card.

West Ham have taken one of 12 points available in the four matches Phillips has played. He looks nowhere near the level required by England in forthcoming friendlies with Brazil and Belgium, and certainly not deserving of a squad place at the European Championship on present form. Of course, there is time to improve, but not much. Increasingly, Southgate has options in Phillips’s position, not least Kobbie Mainoo at Manchester United.

In Turin, Phillips’s issues could have remained relatively hidden. Not just by the standard, but by the exposure. Southgate can take in the odd game, he can send a trusted scout, he can watch a video, but it is still not like the scrutiny a player receives in this country. Every performance picked over, every mistake analysed live, on Match of the Day or Monday Night Football. There is not a fan in the country unaware that Phillips is struggling at West Ham, but Jordan Henderson? What is going on with him at Ajax right now? By comparison, few truly know.

Henderson has played four games and is yet to win. There have been three home draws against the league leaders PSV Eindhoven, Bodo/Glimt of Norway in the Europa Conference League and seventh-placed NEC Nijmegen, plus a defeat away to 12th-placed Heerenveen. We hear Henderson has been given the captaincy in the absence of Steven Berghuis, which is impressive, but how is he playing?

Ajax won seven games in nine before his arrival and are now going through a slump. Is he part of the problem, part of the solution? We’re not familiar. Henderson could be Harry Kane at Bayern Munich, trailing Bayer Leverkusen through little fault of his own. Distance is the issue.

We know Ross Barkley is tearing it up for Luton Town, everyone is impressed by Mainoo, but the same intimate investigation is not being conducted into Henderson’s capabilities week on week. Southgate has taken in a match and spoken about Amsterdam being more accessible than Saudi Arabia, where Henderson had started the season — which it is.

It is a better quality of football too, and he has long admired Henderson’s qualities, particularly shoring up a game. That won’t have changed greatly. Even so, the Eredivisie is not the Premier League. Ajax are a big club with big expectations, but the only time that a Dutch team have eliminated an English one from Europe since 2015 was when Vitesse Arnhem qualified over Tottenham Hotspur in group G of the 2021-22 Conference League. If Henderson were playing where Phillips is now, Southgate would have a far greater understanding of his capabilities at elite level this summer.

The European Championship finals are elite, no matter how many mismatches are played to progress. England may have overcome Ukraine, North Macedonia and Malta to get there, they may play Slovenia, Denmark and Serbia at the group phase, but after that it could be Germany, Holland, France, Belgium or Portugal in the round of 16, depending on results — easier options are available, of course — then it could be one of those plus Spain or Italy in the quarter-finals. Very quickly, only the best will do at a tournament. Inescapably, Phillips is nowhere near that level right now.

Everyone can see it in a way that they are not seeing, say, Ruben Loftus-Cheek at AC Milan. We’re hearing a lot about his excellent form, and Serie A is available on TNT Sports, but there is a reason why Southgate steered Phillips away from Juventus and why Loftus-Cheek’s displays this season are yet to earn him an England recall.

The England manager is clearly not greatly enamoured of the quality of Italian football. The praise now going Loftus-Cheek’s way had previously been given to his team-mate Fikayo Tomori, who had trod the same path from Chelsea’s fringes to the San Siro. Tomori has played for England this season, most recently against Malta at Wembley in November, but his place in the squad is far from guaranteed.

After 18 months in Italy there was a clamour for Tomori’s earlier inclusion with England when, in 2022, Milan played a Champions League group-stage double header with Chelsea. This was the Graham Potter season and Chelsea weren’t strong. Even so, a 5-0 aggregate win, with Tomori poor in the first leg and sent off after 18 minutes in the second, suggested that Southgate was not the worst judge of a centre half.

Equally, it exposed the difference between reading snippets and watching highlight reels and 180 minutes — or, in Tomori’s case, 108 minutes — of first-hand observation. Premier League opposition revealed his limitations.

It cuts both ways, of course. Had Mainoo departed for the Bundesliga, as so many promising English teenagers do, and been having this season for RB Leipzig, say, would so many be calling for his swift promotion to England’s senior ranks? He looks a talent, playing consistently well for Manchester United and scored against Newport County and Wolverhampton Wanderers, but it helps that he is on our screens, and in our stadiums, every week, and is being talked up.

This is the strongest league in Europe and Mainoo is plainly thriving in it. He was good against Luton at the weekend and kept his head when more experienced team-mates, such as Casemiro, lost theirs.

Now Southgate can compare that form, and its level, directly with that of Phillips, just as he can also look at James Garner of Everton and Harrison Reed of Fulham, or even revisit Barkley, in excellent nick in a different role. This means if Phillips turns the corner at West Ham, Southgate will be the first to know. If he doesn’t, however, there really is no hiding place.

 

You didn't have to take down the entire sad middle-aged man demographic. We have feelings, you know.

 

Luke Shaw could miss the rest of the season after suffering a recurrence of a leg injury.

 

Oh shit.

We better hope Chilwell can keep fit or going by Southgate’s pattern to have Trippier or Colwill starting.

I suspect for the next friendlies we will have Chilwell for Brazil but one of the above for the Belgium match, (Or maybe Trippier for the Brazil match if he wants experience for some reason).

 

Was literally thinking the other day we've been lucky with injuries in major tournaments of late and it's been a while since we entered one with a major starter injured. Think we're probably about due one unfortunately. Hope he can get back in time.