Who would actually be your starting attacking players?
I feel like the HYPE which automatically surrounds any decent English player might not help in this case. I’m not sure the squad is quite as strong as is sometimes claimed.
Who would actually be your starting attacking players?
I feel like the HYPE which automatically surrounds any decent English player might not help in this case. I’m not sure the squad is quite as strong as is sometimes claimed.
You could argue England are weak in centre mid as well with the wide players being good but inconsistent/out of form (thinking Grealish, Sancho, Saka and Rashford). In my ongoing phase of being Gareth Southgate's number one fan, you could argue it's *him* that has made the team become a functioning one.
Yeah. Even Foden is brilliant at being a cog in the Man City machine, but does it translate to a totally different team and set up?
Kane as well, he’s no longer exactly a classic center forward is he? He needs that Son figure and England don’t really seem to have anyone who would come close to fitting that bill at the moment.
If you need stepovers from the left wing, though…
Foden is class, there's no "cog in the machine" about it.
GK: Pickford/Ramsdale
RB: James/TAA
CB: Stones/White
CB: Tomori/Maguire
LB: Chilwell/Shaw
CM: Rice/Phillips
CM: Bellingham/Ward-Prowse/Henderson
RW: Saka/Bowen
AM: Foden/Maddison/Mount
LW: Grealish/Sterling/Rashford/Sancho
CF: Kane/DCL/Abraham
That is a quality first 11 + depth, and it's not some FUT bollocks with no balance. Right wing and GK are probably the biggest weaknesses but you'll always have the odd position that's not absolute top class in international football.
You don't need to play "5 up front", but playing 8 defensive players when you've got the likes of Foden, Grealish, Sterling, Kana, Sancho, Saka, Rashford (if he remembers how to play football) as your forward options is a war crime.
You've got the pace in those five to make it work on the counter, though. Against a side that sits back, you're knackered.
Being high off the fumes of EPL hype distorts things. CM and CB are tragic for Brexitball so 3 at the back makes great sense and the only player with any reliable attacking output is Kane. Being near losers is as good as it'll get for you boys so Kiko is right.
Against Italy and Germany (the only top teams we actually played in the tournament) it was 5 at the back with two holding midfielders (+ the keeper). Even against the weaker teams where we went four at the back, it was a fully defensive pivot of Rice and Phillips sitting in front of the defence which is incredibly pedestrian.
I have also not watched the Nations League but it looks like we were phoning it in with the selections. My opinion of Southgate is not based of the Nations League.
Mason Mount as one of the 'attacking three players' is definitely a defensive option.
I'm a bit with Spoons though, there is no mythical Rivaldo-Ronaldo-Ronaldinho forward line to be had here, but what would be nice is 4 defenders, 1 defensive midfielder [Rice] and then 5 more progressive players [even if one of them is a Henderson-type as an '8'] rather than 5 at the back with Rice and Phillips shielding them and Mason Mount as an 'attacker'. That's 8 defenders. Our centre-halves are just so bad though. Is there any prospect of just playing James as one in a four? Left-back is also a bit of a concern.
I try to avoid watching City like the plague so don't know much about Foden but I've always been a bit underwhelmed by him in terms of actual end product.
It doesn't help that Sancho, who was once a bit of a shining light, is seemingly well out of the frame now.
Sancho is class and will be an England mainstay if/when United sort their shit out.
I'd go:
GK: Pickford
RB: James
CB: Stones
CB: Maguire
LB: Chilwell
CM: Rice
CM: Henderson
RW: Alexander-Arnold
AM: Grealish
LW: Sterling
CF: Kane
On our defensive woes I'd completely forgotten about the existence of Ben White. Is he injured or something at the moment?
I'm sure I've said it before, but in lieu of Potter replacing Gareth Southgate Badger they could at least go with some Brighton, or ex-Brighton defenders. Dunk and Webster are just flat out better than modern day Harry Maguire.
Is this the June football thread? Fixtures are out:
https://www.premierleague.com/news/2646764
I'm a twit
16 fixtures before the World Cup. Amazing what you can do when you bin off the international breaks. Pray for the legitimacy of the League Cup, though. And any Championship/League One/Two sides that have key players at the tournament.
Apparently so. Their fixtures arrive next week.
Nottm Forest should not have an apostrophe. If they keep that up it's going to annoy me big time. Using 'Spurs' instead of 'Tottenham' is bad enough.
It's a shame they didn't use Notts Forest and really cause a shitstorm.
Forest probably have my favourite club nickname. Tricky Trees makes them sound so mischievous.
Southampton 7/2 for relegation. Pile on.
The Spanish league are really taking this Mbappe thing hard.
Whilst it's quite fun lolling at Tebas and co, they probably do have a point, particularly in the case of PSG, who appear to operate outwith any sort of financial constraint. At least City go to a lot of effort to make it look like they're on the level.
They may have a point but it's entirely undercut by a) the fact that they're being enormous crybabies about it and b) they only care because they're not the ones with the money.
The sense I've got on all my trips to Spain over the years is that Real Madrid and Barcelona are, culturally, far bigger than any English club or possibly any other club in Europe in relation to their wider city/country. Real Madrid and Spain itself - partly thanks to the Generalisimo but also just in general - are far more intertwined on every level than, say, Manchester United and Britain. When you go to Barcelona it almost feels like the city is a theme park, themed around the football club. As such (and with the money and power that results) they have both always been able to sign more or less any player they liked, when they liked, and I think this new era of not being able to do so is really deeply distressing for them in a way that it wouldn't be for an English club. They have to sign the most famous players or they don't understand why they exist anymore.
I never had a clue why Eden Hazard left Chelsea for Real Madrid - he was playing well, seemed happy, and could have got the same or better money - but I think I know now. They're like a whirlpool that sucks everything in. You can't resist them - until, with an aircraft carrier full of money, you can.
Fair play to him. He honed it down to an art over many years.
England's U19 Euro Championship kicking off on the iplayer.
Chukwuemeka looks a player. Born in Austria to Nigerian parents. Top poaching.
I saw the tweet ‘Breaking: Ryan Giggs resigns as Wales manager’ and got very confused.
Might as well go out on a high.
He's done so well recently with the team.
Is he the biggest ex-footballer to have really messed up his post-playing career? He'll likely never work in football again.
Le Tissier has gone full retard
Aye, but he'd already had his post-football career [and done surprisingly well out of it] and whilst he's a bit of a moron he hasn't actually managed to do anything crimous.
There must be others who have got into some bad shit though. Main one that springs to mind is [ex-England cricketer] Chris Lewis and his drug dealing.
I seen he was on a podcast the other day explaining how he was match fixing back in the day.
I remember him years ago saying they used to have bets on time of the first throw in, is it that again or something else?
Yeah, there always used to be some comedy kick offs back when that was a thing. Oops, overhit that one a bit.
Neil Shipperly ruined it for him, he said, but managed to kick it out just in time to break even.
I'm a twit
Wayne Rooney IN.
Has there ever been a more obvious alcoholic than Wayne Rooney? (Apart from Fergie).
Paul Gascoigne?
Jack Grealish.
Shane Magowan.
My boy Nedum Onuoha's done an episode on Football Weekly about his new book. He is such a fucking don, highly recommended.