Jack Grealish speaking to ITV Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler think we showed a reaction today, I think we could have had a few more especially towards the end as the game opened up. It was difficult at times in the first half but we went into half-time with a 1-0 lead and I think we dominated from then on in. We were disappointed to concede but we needed a win so happy about that. โThe assist was top [from Angel Gomes]. It all comes from the manager letting us play with that freedom. I play with Angel every day in training and I know he is a top player. It was a brilliant assist. โThe celebration was for my little daughter, who makes me so happy. That one was for her. โI said to Trent as a joke that I would give him ยฃ500 if he scored the free-kick and then he slapped it into the top corner. I owe him. โI do not think it has been difficult [since the Greece game]. No matter who gets the job there will be always be negative talk. In my honest opinion I do not really get the criticism. Lee [Carsley] is a top, top manager and I love playing for him.โ
Finland vs England player ratings: Alexander-Arnold and Gomes impress but Bellingham goes off the boil https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...ngland-player-ratings-gomes-bests-bellingham/ Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler Lee Carsleyโs fourth outing as interim manager produced a welcome win โ Telegraph Sport assesses how each of his players performed. England returned to winning ways as Jack Grealish, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Declan Rice ensured a 3-1 victory in Finland, who scored a late consolation goal through Arttu Hoskonen. Telegraph Sport analyses and rates each playerโs performance on a shambolic night for the hosts. England (4-2-3-1) Dean Henderson Surprise start after Jordan Pickfordโs poor display against Greece, he dealt with straightforward shots and was not to know Kallman was offside when he saved well. Bizarrely was not taking goal kicks. 6/10 Kyle Walker First minutes under Carsley and had good battles on his flank but would have liked to have attacked more and linked up with Palmer better. 5/10 John Stones Important early block saved England, he had a good tussle with Jensen, who looked to take him on when one-on-one. Carried the ball forward into the midfield. 6/10 Marc Guehi Never out of position and he made important blocks, tackles and interceptions when Finland tried to slide their forwards in down the side between him and Alexander-Arnold. 7/10 Trent Alexander-Arnold Beautiful free-kick for his goal. New option for England in problem left-back position, where he had not played for Liverpool this season. 7/10 Angel Gomes Lovely assist when he slipped ball behind Finlandโs defence for opener. Guilty of losing possession early which led to Keskinen chance โ but mistakes accepted with his style. 7/10 Declan Rice Took goal well. He started deep alongside Angel but clearly had instruction to move forwards and join attacks, which ended up with him scoring from close range. 7/10 Cole Palmer Quiet first half so started drifting inside after the break into central position but it was congested, with little room. Got a shot away that was saved well. 5/10 Jude Bellingham Played in the No 10 role before going forward and playing up front at times. Got in good positions without the final pass or shot coming off. 5/10 Jack Grealish Cool finish when he went through to open the scoring, he kept the ball well and drew the odd foul. Four goals for England now and half of them have come under Carsley. 7/10 Harry Kane Passed fit to start after missing the Greece defeat but the England captain struggled for chances - he did not have sight of goal - although he dropped deep to get involved in the play. 5/10 Subs: Madueke 69 (Palmer), Watkins 69 (Kane), Foden 80 (Bellingham), Lewis 80 (Gomes), Rice 85 (Gallagher) Not used: Colwill, Gordon, Livramento, Pickford (g), Pope (g), Solanke Finland (4-3-3): Hradecky (c) 6; Alho 6 (Antman 82), Hoskonen 7, Ivanov 5, Uronen 6; Kamara 6, Schรผller 4 (Walta 63), Peltola 6; F. Jensen 7 (Lod 75), Kallman 6 (Pohjanpalo 63) ; Keskinen 7 (Pukki 75) Not used: Galvez, Joronen (g), Nissila, Pikkarainen, Sinisalo (g), Stahl, Tenho, Referee: Giorgi Kruashvili (Georgia). Attendance: 32,411
Who ever becomes manager I think we need a set system and then pick the best players that suit the team we are playing against.
Times player ratings. โEngland (4-2-3-1) D Henderson 6 โ K Walker 6, J Stones 6, M Guรฉhi 9, T Alexander-Arnold 8 โ D Rice 7 (C Gallagher 85), A Gomes 7 (R Lewis 80, 6) โ C Palmer 6 (N Madueke 68, 6), J Bellingham 5 (P Foden 80), J Grealish 8 โ H Kane 6 (O Watkins 69, 6).โ .
Heโs trying to fit certain players into the team. Instead of picking the best team. Pretty much the opposite of what he did with the U21โs. Still in the circumstances any win would have done.
BBC Player ratings Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler 1. Grealish - 7.83 2. Watkins - 6.85 3, Rice - 6.59 4. Guehi - 6.14 5. Alexander - Arnold - 6.10 6. Henderson - 6.06 7, Gomes - 6.02 8. Stones - 5.96 9. Bellingham - 5.90 10. Madueke - 5.60 11. Walker - 5.47 12. Palmer - 5.09 13. Gallagher - 4.92 14. Foden - 4.92 15. Lewis - 4.65 16. Kane - 4.36 1. Hoskonen - 5.35 2. Keskinen - 5.24 3. Pukki - 5.23 4. Kallman - 5.16 5. Hradecky - 5.14 6. Kamara - 5.03 7. Alho - 5.03 8. Peltola - 5.00 9. Jensen - 5.00 10. Antman - 4.96 11. Uronen - 4.94 12. Ivanov - 4.90 13. Walta - 4.88 14. Schuller - 4.85 15. Pohjanpalo - 4.82 16. Lod - 4.76
That Grealish ITV interview, on top of that performance, highlights even more why it was crazy he wasnโt taken to the Euros. Players said they missed his upbeat personality out in Germany. Plus he makes things happen on the pitch with his touch, work ethic and movement. #ENG— Henry Winter (@henrywinter) October 13, 2024 Question was instead of who? Eze or Bowen? Gordon being left out would have been pretty bold of Southgate.
This EXACTLY, instead of trying to shoehorn Palmer out of position he should have picked Manueke in the first place, Palmer, Bellingham and Grealish were all playing a no. 10 roll even though only one of them was in the no. 10 position......the result tippy-tappy, tippy-tappy, three players all looking to pass the ball through the eye of a needle in order to play in non-existent players. If Carsley fancied Bellingham then play Bellingham and drop Palmer, or visa-versa, or of course play Foden, you can always rotate them or swap them during the game, Trent shouldn't be left back, if necessary play bloody Chilwell, or the best English player we have in that position. If we started with Gordon, Madueke and Watkins I think we would have won by more.
Overall, not a great performance again really but we won. Positives: Gomes again looked good ln midfield, great pass for the first goal. Watkins very good when he came on and made a big impact. Grealish scored again. Guehi looked very solid at the back. Negatives: Defence again shaky, bringing Walker back in looked an odd move, Trent at left back, Kane anonymous until he went off. Kane for me is an elephant in the room. Really poor tonight, whether he was not fully fit I don't know but then why start him. Carsley picked 3 strikers but like Southgate when in charge seemed too scared to try someone else other than Kane to start up front.
Kane scored 2 goals a couple of games ago and looked on it. Just came back from an injury. People really need to stop writing Kane off its weird. We got smashed to pieces the last game he didn't play. I would say,he shouldn't start games when he's not fully fit.
He's bringing that home with him. โ๏ธYour England Player of the Match connected by @EE once again: @TrentAA! ๐ pic.twitter.com/88vjFZjgf9— England (@England) October 13, 2024
Also Kane drops into the 10 role and Angel Gomes is really 10 for Lillie not a 6 though he's the best option available for the 6 role since Rice Jude can't play out the back. So really that's 5 players that all want to play one role and serve one purpose tactically speaking. But hey 3-1 is 3-1. That's a good performance in my book.
I don't see a problem with Gomes playing deeper. He's done it for Lille and our under-21s plenty of times, and I've never had the impression that he lacked positional discipline or was getting in the way of other players. If anything, I'd have said that it was a better position for him given that he doesn't score or assist in huge numbers. It's certainly where our need is greater.
he mainly plays as a 10 for Lille but es it seems like he can do the role at least against this level of opposition/press. can he play as a regista against a top side? we will see but no more pointing out that there are 5 players that naturally want to play in that creative 10 role feeding others in the lineup today piggybacking on another poster mentioning 3. he did great in the role today though could be the missing link. United could probably use him in place of Erikson/Casemiro in that 6 spot.
Well I'm not going to pretend that I've watched every match he's played for Lille, but sites that track player positions have him down as playing DM/CM at least as often as AM both this season and last - here's FBRef's match logs for last season, for instance. All of us have seen him play in a double-pivot for our youth teams, as he did throughout the last under-21 Euros. He never looked like he was straining at the leash to get forward. As for whether he can do it for England against top opposition, sure, that remains to be seen until he plays against top opposition. The early signs are good though, and that's all we have for now.
Projected pots for WC 2026 qualifiers (12 Oct):Pot 1: ๐ซ๐ท๐ช๐ธ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ๐ง๐ช๐ณ๐ฑ๐ต๐น๐ฎ๐น๐ฉ๐ช๐ญ๐ท๐จ๐ญ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฆ๐นPot 2: ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ท๐ต๐ฑ๐ธ๐ช๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ๐ญ๐บ๐ท๐ธ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ท๐ด๐ณ๐ด๐ฌ๐ท๐จ๐ฟPot 3: ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ๐ธ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ช๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ชNIR๐ง๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฑPot 4: ๐ง๐ฌ๐ฑ๐บ๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ง๐พ๐ฝ๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ฆ๐ฟ๐ช๐ช๐จ๐พ๐ฑ๐น๐ฑ๐ป๐ซ๐ดPot 5: ๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ฒ๐น๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒWhat would you like our group to be like?— We're On Our Way (@EnglandOnOurWay) October 13, 2024
Now I've sobered up. The performance wasn't bad but there is still too much slow build up. I thought it was a poor game overall
Juventus could move for Everton's 27-year-old England forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who will be out of contract in the summer. (Corriere dello Sport - in Italian) Dele Alli is plotting one of football's greatest comebacks after two years out with his sights set on 2026 World Cup.(Daily Mail) England gaffer Lee Carsley admitted he had his eyes set on playing Dean Henderson over Jordan Pickford for this international break. (Daily Star) A rumour touting Jordan Henderson for a move to Rangers looks to have been given a quick-fire answer by Ajax boss Francesco Farioli. The Italian boss appears to have closed the door a mid-season exit for Henderson with speculation growing about his future. (Daily Record)