I honestly wish I could get excited by this result. But I’ve been there too many times, this does not work in tournament football and we’ll even be mocked by other nations for still playing like a rugby team in 2020.
I think a measured response is needed. England played well that second half. Credit to them, credit to Southgate they looked a functional team. The passing second half was decent, defensively a thousand times better. Created some changes but still pretty lacking in open play I think relative to what we can produce. I don't think that should hide concerns though that a) its not good enough that England keep needing second half changes to get things looking functional in this formation - more efficient teams would have had this game put to bed against us first half. b) I don't think we did anything today that couldn't have been achieved in another formation that gets more out our attackers. c) This formation still brings up some selection issues like balancing midfield and how uncomfortable the centre backs are in it. And we shouldn't forget Belgium despite missing players are number one in the world either.
Not sure why England fans are complaining about a penalty that was maybe soft but I think it was imo. Shots get deflected and go in all the time but for some reason when it happens with England, that’s not good enough and maybe we should tell the ref to cancel out the goal because it’s not perfect enough.
I ended up having to go out after 20+ mins. Expected Belgium to press really well but they didn’t. Wales were so much better at pressing in the first half in our previous game. Can’t really comment on much else.
it wasn’t excellent what are your standards ? We were a bit more in control in the Second half but didn’t create any chance before Belgium somehow went behind and left us gigantic space. We look a bit like a Tony Pullis Team, that’s not the route I was expecting with all the young technical players we have nowadays.
Yeah right because we should beating the world's number 1 ranked team, a team that's lost 2 of its last 44 games by at least 5 goals right!?
I don't think we passed really well at any point in the game, but there was quite a lot of defensive organisational improvement in the second half that was impressive, as was the work rate. Those are the main positives. The negatives are that this will no doubt validate Southgate's approach in his mind, especially given that Mount got the winning goal, even though pretty much everything we said would happen did happen. Belgium just didn't really turn up. It's been said already, but no way are they the best international team in the world.
It wasn't route 1. Rice actually looked more confident in the second half. Phillips brought a good range of passing
Look at the strength in-depth of our squad though !! They had nobody and fell away as soon as KDB went off .. even he struggled today as he didn’t have the usual quality around him ..