That defending
I know how delusional it sounds, but I honestly think if we'd tried to play football in the first half rather than desperation counter-attacking we could've given them a game. Oh well.
If you weren't 4-0 down they probably wouldn't have let you play the way you have been this half to be fair.
Just stumbled upon this.
Can you imagine a greater clusterfuck?
Why not get Turkey and Syria involved for the full Ottoman reunion.
Like everything else they’ll just buy it and it’ll happen.
Was Fernandes and Eriksen a tactical error in a game like that? They'd have been better off going with Casemiro and McTominay Shirley? I mean fuck if it was me on FM I'd have prob gone Casemiro with McFred and just tried to shithouse them as much as possible and maybe grab one on the break .
Bruno Lage sacked at Wolves. Who comes in next?
Mick McCarthy.
Has the Casemiro lad played at all yet?
As an aside, it's incredible how Southgate manages to make Foden look shit.
Aye, it’s incredible how much of a free pass he gets on how he has handled Sancho, Foden and TAA(regardless of his poor start to this season) since they got into the squad.
He’s got three very good young players there who would walk into most teams in the world and he gets fuck all out of them.
It genuinely irritates me how wank he is.
A team like:
Pope
James
Stones
Tomori
Chilwell
Rice
Bellingham
Foden
Madison
Grealish/Sancho
Kane
is full of quality players who've performed at absolute top club level. They should be playing great football and dicking on most international sides then going out against the very best ones and playing as equals. I mean that would be a genuinely good Champions League team, never mind international football.
Instead we're served up some 6-3-1 formation shitefest and look like we're happy to nick a point or a 1-0 against the likes of Hungary.
Last edited by randomlegend; 02-10-2022 at 04:57 PM.
I think my Foden scepticism comes solely from watching him for England.
More or less the same side other than swapping a centre back for an attacking midfielder and so being a totally different and much more attacking formation, yeah
The biggest issue with Southgate is not that he picks the wrong players (although he does do that too), it's that he has the best set of attacking/creative players that England have had in our lifetime at his disposal and he sets up to play the worst brand of football I've ever seen. He is totally incapable tactically of giving the incredible talent in the squad the opportunity to actually shine.
Just clocked Liverpool’s next two games are Arsenal and Man City. Class, hopefully the run continues.
He's a pragmatist and while we do have the best array of attacking players in our lifetime, that isn't the case further back, so his style is set up to compensate. If you put someone else in charge (not sure who) you could turn them into a madcap attacking side but that's so much harder to coach when you don't have any time with the players.
The Sven era saw the best all round talent we've had I think, we really should have won Euro 2004.
It's definitely. It annoying. When it was getting us to a final, "system over players" was an annoying but understandable evil, but we've been both boring AND shit ever since.
They should get Pochettino in.
The players further back aren't even bad. In fact the vast majority are very good. Bellingham is absolutely brilliant, Rice is extremely solid as a defensive midfielder, Reece James is quality, Stones manages to play 25+ games a season for one of the best sides on the planet, Tomori is very good (under-rated because he's in Italy). I don't particularly rate Chilwell or Shaw and all the keepers are below the top bracket, but you almost never have 11 world class players in an international team.
Given the talent available the way we play is criminal.
You mentioned your line-up would be a good Champions League team on paper, well so was the one on Monday. I'm just not sure how you expect a team that meet up for about six weeks a year to achieve that sort of level on the pitch.
Being shit and being defensively minded aren't the same thing. I, too, would enjoy it if England played like Potter's Brighton, but I think what he does is a pretty safe bet for getting to the latter stages of a tournament.
I've been enjoying watching Scotland fans scream Clarke out at the same time as the Southgate out movement. What do the French think of Deschamps? Are there any popular international managers?
Scotland are better than they've been for ages, their fans must be morons.
Playing six primarily defensive players, as England did against Germany, lessens the potential of the team. Sterling, Maguire and Dier are also all pretty wank.
It's not about "good" or "shit", it's about setting up in a way that gets the most out of the players you have available. Southgate does not do that.
I don't think adding James Maddison into the side is going to have the transformative effect that you think. France won the World Cup with Blaise Matuidi at left wing ffs.
Raheem Sterling is clearly not "wank".
I'm normally on James' side in these not at all tedious debates but he's being deliberately thick here.
He could have been standing up front next to Kane as well. Waiting for a pass from Raheem Stirling, that will never come.
Ivan Drago, a man known for winning.
If there's anything that sums up international football, it's that Norway with Haaland, Odegaard and a pretty solid support cast got nowhere near the World Cup. However, in 1994, Norway reached 3rd in the FIFA rankings while playing 'Drilloball', a form of book-based kick and rush which emphasised hoofing it as quickly as possible, and in the air, to Jostein Flo or another of their innovative wide target men. This ultra-direct approach was grounded in the philosophy that the best way to play football was to get it from back to front as quickly, and with as few touches, as possible. Pity their midfield generals of the era such as Roar Strand (who I always just picture as a Viking warrior in full helmet and garb) and Erik Mykland, the only bearded player at World Cup 1998 - how times change - who spent their working lives as bypassed men.
So yeah, Southgate knows.
Brentford did the same months ago.
Just add him to the conveyor belt of future world class full backs born in Scotland. The worlds best at something
If Bale can carry Wales, Haaland should be able to carry Norway.
Steve Cook is laughably out of his depth at this level.
This MNF breakdown of the goals with Maddison has been quite excellent. Nice to hear a player talk about the thinking behind what they do.