Venezuela beating Egypt at the moment (HT) which would mean a draw would be enough against Egypt to finish top 2.
We had about 1.3 more total xG in this game compared to the Venezuela game and scored 8 instead of zero!
So we need to beat Egypt to guarantee top 2 and a place in the knockout stage, otherwise 8 of the best 12 third place teams qualify.
Was looking at some of the results from other groups in this tournament, Japan topped group B and beat Morocco in the first game, they then and drew 0-0 with New Caledonia, while Morocco in turn beat New Caledonia 16-0! just a reminder that you'll get some massively variable results/performances at this level.
Line up: Porter, Mantato, Braithwaite, Simmonds, Headley, Page, Ridgeon, Williams-Barnett, Burrowes, Ezenwata, Heskey.
Ryan is obsessed with the same type of CM. We struggled in the Venezuela game when he played Ridgeon and Page together.
Was just about to say this. They don't work well together as a pair. Putting two box-to-box, ball-carrying types at the base of midfield never looks good at any level.
It just ends up with Page seemingly playing hesitantly and barely being involved because Ridgeon is all action. Both want to do the same things etc. Ryan was playing them like this in the Euros. It also doesn’t help us off the ball. If you want to play LWB centrally you want anchor type CM behind him. Maybe Burrowes is in the attacking role to help defensively but I still fear the balance is all over the place. We’ve looked really poor off the ball under Ryan and to me this team on paper looks wide open.
Three minutes in and we are struggling to play through midfield from deep. LWB has to come pretty much to the CB’s
Wonderful goal from Heskey, always impresses me. I don't think he has the dribbling of some of his contemporaries from this age group but his game seems a lot more rounded than many in this group. It'll be really poor if we don't qualify from here, given even with a 1 goal loss we will go through! Terrible of conceding twice in the second half playing wide open for no reason to go out in the last Euro's.