Trippier innit?
Too many groups
All those shit teams
England
VAR
Taz's predictions
Nothing. International tournaments are the best.
Trippier innit?
I'm a twit
Looking to set-piece specialists when you have Grealish, Foden, Sancho and Kane is a great indicator of your failings.
This isn't chump club football with your 'movement' and all that bullshit, set pieces are hugely important in internationals. We turned a dogshit team into semi-finalists at '18 on the back of them.
You don't even have a single dominant header of the ball so naturalise Sinisa Mihailjlhjlhjlhjiovic for all it matters. At least Slabhead could cause some problems.
Kane on corners.
Will he be on the pitch to take them?Originally Posted by Baz
I guess maybe he is our first choice right back? Difficult to tell…
Hopefully Harry Kane again
Is it really a surprise that a nation that has regularly been knocked out early has failed to win matches? The article mentions Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain etc as having >80% records when scoring first. Well they've also all won over 60% of their tournament matches since 2000. England have won 39% in that period. I see no evidence that the order goals are scored in is predictive of future performance.
The idea that England's squad from 1996 have any bearing on how they will do this summer is insane. Like trying to predict this year's Champions League final based on how many goals Salomon Kalou scored in 2007.
Just because Paul Gascoigne's fat arse isn't going to travel forward in time 25 years and put us out of this tournament doesn't mean that whatever factors contributed to us performing in broadly the same way for a period of decades can't contribute to the same again this time out.
It might do, but it doesn't that they're connected. Southgate is pretty cautious but that's pretty much the meta for international football.
Maybe it's chance and it's all been for different reasons but it doesn't change the fact that our performances as we go out tend to have an awful lot in common with each other.
Teams can play well and go out or go out looking like they had a plan, with England it's almost always crabbing, backfoot bullshit.
Yeah, I don't remember much about the Croatia semi final but I sense we didn't create much. We're not direct and we don't really run at sides. Sterling can do that but he's also dicking about at the byline waiting for Rashford or someone to sulk into the box. Assuming Sterling doesn't try to do it all himself.
That losing from the lead statistic could be down to playing a certain way that leaves us open to fatigue, or having players who can't cope with pressure, or having managers who can't react to developments in the game (or all three). All of those things could still have relevance to today, which is how the pattern would have emerged in the first place.
Italy are posting up some mighty impressive form. Haven't lost for almost 3 years and winning games real comfortably. Quality scattered all over the pitch but in a very classy, understated way in an age of FIFA 'packs' and mixed-race physical specimen. Do it for Mussolini, lads
And the defence still anchored by Chiellini and Bonucci
I’d love to see them win it. They had a great run in 2016 and I think if Pelle doesn’t hit the worst penalty of all time in the shootout against the Germans they could have potentially beaten France in the semis.
I'd love to see them go out early and go through yet another round of entitled histrionics.
Berardi is class.
I'm a twit
Italian tantrums are the best tantrums.
Last four World Cup winners:
Italy
Spain
Germany
France
Spot the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Japan 2030.
Featuring a 64 year old Kazu Muira up front.
Everton 'in talks ' with Andrea Pirlo sounds pretty lol.
As is the entirely expected Spurs no longer interested in Conte as he wanted money to spend line. They're actually in quite a tricky position the spuds, could go backwards quickly if they meff this appointment.
Ridiculous
Last edited by Don; 06-06-2021 at 04:20 PM.
That can't be all of Grealish.
Why’s he called up 3 right backs and still playing Godfrey there
Have they changed the spelling of Romania in English? Rou is what we’d use in french.
Roumania in English is archaic, so probably some boomer manning the decks.
Really hoping for a Rashford leg break. Woeful footballer.
I've been half-watching this for ten minutes and only just now suddenly realised oh shit, we're the team in blue.
Grealish is such a cheating bastard
Romania actually changed their 3-letter code from ROM to ROU some years ago.
Captains penalty.
Finishing has been abysmal.
It's coming home.
Eddie Howe to take over for the World Cup?
Didn't catch any of this, but seemingly that's two utterly pointless and rancid warm up games.
I don't understand Marcus Rashford, in that I don't get what he actually is. His scoring record (one season aside) is nowhere near good enough to be a striker and he doesn't seem particularly creative either.
If we stink up this tournament I'm going to be livid.
Germany Portugal u21 final on now.
If you looked purely at his stats steadily going up season on season leading to 20+ goals in the last two years you'd think he was coming along nicely but he's managed to hit that this year despite not ever really hitting form or looking that good.
I can't think of (m)any games this year where he's properly threatened the defence consistently, he just semi-regularly manages to get a goal.
At least we have conclusively learned that Henderson shouldn't be anywhere near a penalty, under any circumstances, unless we somehow take Spain to the 11th in a shoot-out and they have De Gea playing.
Nah, penalties are a lottery. Henderson struck it well but the keeper guessed right.
If you believe Henry Winter, he's carrying an ankle and shoulder injury which makes me think why the fuck are we even playing him with the reserves available.
How in the hell are we doing that again?
The livid is rising.
@Shindig It wasn't very good really, it was too high and not close enough to the corner.
Frustrating from all of Southgate, Henderson and Calvert-Lewin there.
Just so silly. We should have a list of takers that is followed by everyone.
That we don't have that, with the tournament starting in a week, is quite worrying.
Presumably Henderson was 'on them' (god help us) otherwise seriously what the fuck is going on?
They'd better not have one of those don't take it if you won it mantras.
Marcus Rashford is very good at a few specific things, namely carrying the ball at speed and kicking it hard with a reasonable degree of accuracy, which under a proper manager in a proper system would make him very effective. He has his best games when United beat somebody good with counter-attacking and he is expected to maintain a degree of position discipline, and his best spells have been when Ole Gunnar Binman had his new manager/Project Restart bounce and things just sort of managed themselves, as well as when Jose Mourinho was being accused of stifling him because he wasn't scoring that many.
What he isn't good at is anything to do with playmaking, because his decision-making is poor and he lacks composure. You see this every single week. The longer he has the ball the more likely he is to make the wrong decision, to the point where you can see his brain working on it. Unfortunately, he seems to fancy himself as a bit of a 'wide forward', cutting in and making things happen, rather than more of a traditional wide player who ought to just be running the same lines on repeat with the odd pot-shot thrown in. He also seems to be a bit of a comfort blanket for Ole Gunnar Binman, hence the playing through injuries and being shoehorned into the team on the right where he is genuinely useless.
BBC just put a quiz up about our Euro 1996 semi-final line-up. That side's implanted in my memory and then Steve Stone always came on at the 70 minute mark. Sol Campbell got 4 minutes against Scotland which stunned me.
I was just getting into football at that time and had Steve Stone as a doyen of the England side and the consummate footballer (I think because he may have scored/played well in that Higuita match which was Game Zero for me watching England).
He was actually just a functional bald man, wasn't he?
On another note, this kneeling/booing thing I find really interesting. It's a real front line in the culture war - one group think they are making a meaningful gesture against racism, one group think they are unfairly being called racist/being lectured to by rich people and are expressing their feeling of injustice about that. Both groups are probably wrong, and neither has any interest whatsoever in engaging with the other's point of view. There is no way out and it looks set to dominate the tournament as far as the England narrative is concerned.
And it achieves absolute zero.
I'm a twit
I swear some of you gammons would rather England win the tournament than defeat racism as a team. I just want to see the likes of Rashford and Sterling finally not have to face the hardships they face on a daily basis.
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