Or the players are not good enough to play any better. No manager will turn them into Brazil 1970 team.
Agreed. Out of the group of players he has, only Kane and at a stretch Alli would get into the match day squads of any of the real heavyweights like Germany, Spain and France. It really is as simple as that. England's only two strengths are pace and grafting. The squad is full of it all over the pitch. If Southgate had any brains, he would dispense of the media-driven fallacy that we should be playing like Spain or Brazil, and instead set us up like any of the small teams at a major tournament - defending deep and in numbers and playing on the counter. Play like Wales did in 2016 and we might just avoid the usual humiliation.
There should however be a timetable for when the first England senior starting XI has sufficient players with the technical competence to play like recent Spain etc. If that milestone is missed, then the inquisition begins as to why together with a root and branch purge within the FA (at all levels) of any personnel (admin and on-pitch) who have contributed to the non-delivery. Germany had no compunction in doing the above in 2000 for the 'disgrace' they considered not progressing beyond the Euro group stage to be. Why should the FA be any different ??
There is no solution and there never will be. Not without introducing drastic restrictions and quotas to the PL and forcing a major shift of resources to ensure that its wealth and TV money filters down to the rest of the Football League and leads to improved grassroots development. I personally have no interest in curbing the number of foreign players in the PL as it is by a country mile the most exciting and competitive league in world football and doing so would ruin that, all for the sake of a brief and commercially sickening corporate orgy of a tournament every 2 years that tends to produce no more than half a dozen decent games of football amidst an avalanche of snail-paced lethargic ****e. The loss-gain equation of sacrificing the PL on the altar of national pride simply isn't logical. **** international football, says I. Who needs it? The average host country that nukes chasms in its national debt in order to upgrade infrastructure and construct white elephants that will be useful for all of 3 weeks? The thousands of migrant workers in Qatar currently doing a very good impression of the biblical story of the Israelite slavery in Egypt? **** it. I am however a massive fan of forcing PL teams to 'donate' proportionate sums of money to the lower leagues to assist the development of the next Dele Allis. This is a sensible and reasonable aim that won't seriously compromise the unique energy of the PL. A couple of million to the average PL club is pocket money yet to the likes of Leyton Orient could've solved their multiplicity of problems in one fell swoop. Or better still, sell that colossal waste of taxpayer money St George's Park and donate the proceeds to struggling teams in the lower leagues.
I didn't see last nights game but from what I've heard I didn't miss that much.The way I see it Southgate should never have got the job in the first place.he is another fa yes man.Henderson should never be playing for England ffs there are many better midfield players than him.if we play 5 at the back why do we need 2 holding midfielders it's a joke especially against the opponents in our group. Play to our strengths not square pegs in round holes.pick players in form and not by the size of their club it's not rocket science. To me a midfielder should be able to do the lot tackle pass shoot etc if he can't do that then pick someone who can.**** knows where England would be without kane upfront,.we have played crap so many times and relied on him to get us out of trouble.Joe hart has had his time and failed yet we still pick him as no 1..same old England and always will be unless we give the job to a manager that knows what he is doing and knows what players he should pick.
Then there is at least one solution. The bottom line is simply this : call a spade a spade. If ANY national league reaches the commercial size/value of the PL, then commercial considerations will act to the detriment of the international senior team of that nation unless there are regulatory constraints. As supporters of club and national sides, and as the national organisation of both, someone has to make the executive decision as to what is most important to them, and what they are prepared to (not) sacrifice from their side to (not) benefit the other. And live with the consequences.
The actual commentator was worse the other day - calling a badly placed cross by Rashford from 35 yds out by the touchline an 'effort at goal'! How the **** do they get these jobs??
It's difficult to know where to go with the England manager dilemma. Unlike countries like Germany and Spain, we aren't currently blessed with a national style of play and/or lots of very talented players. We have players who play completely different styles for club and country and most seem to struggle to switch between them. Henderson is used to having extremely pacy players in front of him. He just gives them the ball and tries to keep up. When he has to 'make the play', he's completely lost. Rashford's most effective on the break but England don't sit deep. Dele thrives on arriving late into the box for passes from Christian Eriksen but we don't currently have anyone in midfield who can pass the ball worth a damn. We need a coach to drill the players into a style of play that gets the most out of what we have got and a manager to banish the fear and negativity. Southgate is, was and never will be either. He was a cheap, boring and pointless appointment. Hoddle may be a crap co-commentator but he does know about setting a team up. If he could work alongside someone with a bit more charisma than Gareth...........but it won't happen. The most important factor in appointing Southgate was that he wasn't 'dodgy' and would enable the FA grandees to keep their snouts in the trough. The same reason we got Don Revie and Ron Greenwood and not Cloughie. Hoddle's a no-no and as most great coaches are either a bit bonkers, megalomaniacs or maverick, then we're condemned to more mundanity. I don't blame Southgate for being out of his depth. If I was offered the job at £3m p.a., I'd have snatched their hand off too.
But again, my knee-jerk reaction to this - and I'm far from alone in thinking this - is simply: who cares? The PL in its current state is at least a decade past saving, unless we start talking about ridiculously draconian regulations that effectively cripple the league and result in the likes of United and City hoovering up all of the HG talent (at least they'll play them) whilst augmenting their teams with the 2-3 best foreign players out there allowed by the new quotas. In essence, the PL would regress to become like La Liga. Stale, boring and predictable. I have no interest in seeing this happen for the sake of allowing us the luxury of sticking england flags to our car windows every other summer. It just doesn't add up. Sacrificing the best and most entertaining league in the world for 3 weeks of largely forgettable football? No thanks. Like I say, the real time to act and impose regulations was probably the turn of the millennium when it was clear that the PL juggernaut was essentially unstoppable. But at a national level we were blinded by the 'golden generation' - all, ironically, products of the pre-PL era academies - and happily duped ourselves into believing that the calibre of Scholes, Shearer, Ferdinand et al. would continue to sprout forth from the green english pastures for evermore. It didn't happen, and as the PL has become saturated by foreign talent in the 15 years since, it has become an impossibility. Proof of the pudding is in the fact that in the 6 seasons since the HG rules were introduced, the national side has if anything regressed. That and the half a billion pound piss up at St George's Park appear to have had zero benefit whatsoever, as even at clubs such as our own who give youngsters every chance to shine, the technically gifted and creative glue that holds the whole thing together remains the Eriksens, Dembeles, Alderweirelds of this world. I for one don't want to see any more regulations introduced to the PL as I personally couldn't give enough of a toss about intl football. I respect the fact that others might differ but warn them that once we set off down that path, it won't be long until we're subjected to the cricket scores that plague La liga and the Bundesliga. Great debate btw
Watching the England performance with their sideways game made me think of Tommy Harmer.None of todays players could take on a defence singlehanded and then give the center forward a through pass to run onto as he could. While todays players have caps thrown at them,"Harmer the Charmer" managed only one or two "B" caps. Amazing!
The problem with this is that the players largely aren't used to playing this way with their clubs. Southgate should be able to pick two different ways of playing and adjust the side to fit whoever England are playing against. Defensive, underdog side? Bring in the passers and get the service to the genuinely dangerous attacking talent. Kane, Alli, Rashford and Sterling are all major threats in the Premier League and they're all quite young, too. Going up against a good footballing side? Go on the counter. Five at the back, use pacy wingbacks like Walker and Rose for width and hit Vardy and Kane on the break. Drinkwater in the middle alongside Dier or Henderson. Maybe even both. Have Rashford, Sterling and possibly Redmond or Gray available if you need to introduce more width and pace. England don't have a side that can outplay Spain, Germany and the like in a straight fight. The manager needs to recognise that and adjust accordingly.
Any nation that has a decent national side and a majority of competent home players playing in their domestic league, wants to keep it so, but said league is not too far away from possibly becoming another PL if a lorry-load of broadcast money or oil money poured in.
If anything the con was accepting the overuse of the term "Golden Generation" without questioning it. Putting aside nations such as Germany and France who are a conveyor belt of talent and have been for decades, when most countries have a golden generation they usually have genuine world class (not Sky Sports' World Class™) players in their team, for example the 1996-8 Croatia team had Suker, Boban and Prosinecki, the 1992 Denmark team had Schmeichel, the 1994 Bulgaria team had Stoichkov - all of them players who stood head and shoulders above those who came before while setting the bar for those who follow. Some nations are able to produce players who match the standards set by those that came before, while others are doomed to forever look a shadow of those teams. This is the issue I always had with the overuse of the term "Golden Generation" for the 2002-6 England team: were they really a step up from what came before, or was it a marketing exercise? Because let's be honest here, the term did a damn fine job of throwing the likes of Lineker, Gascoigne, Robson, Barnes, Waddle and Shilton from the 1986-1990 team under the bus in spite of the fact all of them could have walked into the 2002-6 team and, in some cases, actually improved it. Compare the current Portugal squad to the golden generation they had in the mid-90s. While the current team may have won the Euros and boast the most overrated player in world football in their team, the mid-90s team with the likes of Figo and Rui Costa in the lineup were a damn sight better to watch than nine outfield players passing it sideways for 90 minutes while the commentators fellate the other outfield player who's done the square root of **** all for the entire tournament.
But Portugal are a prime example of what can happen when a manager is honest and humble enough to acknowledge his side's shortcomings, turn his back firmly on the glittering style of the previous era and instead embracing a far more pragmatic strategy that made them ridiculously difficult to beat. If Southgate did the same, fans and the media would spend all summer lamenting all the sideways passing, but we may just stand a fool's hope of reaching a semi final, a la Wales.
England how good are we – how good have we ever been? Now England did win the world cup in my lifetime but as I was born in 1964 it doesn’t really count. My first real memory of England is of the 3-1 defeat to West Germany at home in the 1972 Euros, Gunter Netzer ran the show and that was as good as it got in the 70s. I do recall the Tomaschevski match at Wembley in 73 where it could be argued that we were unlucky but the 70s were a wash out. So I have been watching England at major tournaments since 1980 and in all that time how many times did we actually play well, even in the tournaments now remembered so fondly Italia 90 and Euro 96, we only played well sporadically and the truth is that we are just not very good at international tournament football, it’s impossible to compare football across the generations but in my opinion we have always had a smattering of good players (we have now) but no matter who is in charge we have not been able to get many good performances. Most of our best performances have come in matches we have lost (normally on penalties), twice v The Germans 90 & 96, Argentina (with 10 men) in 98 and twice v Portugal 2004 & 2006 but those were generally the highlights. In 1990 were awful v Republic of Ireland, OK v Holland and Egypt, lucky v Belgium and Cameroon and in the semi excellent v Germans but we lost, same in 96 Switzerland was average, Scotland was an awful match lit up by Gascoignes goal (I was there), we were magnificent v the dutch, lucky v Spain and again gave the Germans a good game before the inevitable happened. 1998 Hoddles team were the most consistent, decent wins in the group and unlucky to get Argentina in the last 16 we played well and should have won but we didn’t. Sven tournaments reverted to type the odd good game but nothing to write home about and since then the matches have been similar to those in the other tournaments, but we have not turned draws into wins. Iceland was a low point I don’t want to revisit. So where are we now? Actually in much the same place we usually are, hoping for a kind draw and that we keep our best players fit, we aren’t world beaters and haven’t been for 51 years, we also are not as bad as many in the media would like us to think we are, we have been a mediocre international team for as long as most of us can remember (there was no golden generation) and that is what we are now.
I was born in 1960 so have the same memories as you and agree with you 100 per cent on your comments.it doesn't bother me that we don't win the tournaments but I would like us to get out of the group stage when we get to the finals but we have been piss poor at most of them.The rota of English players compared to foreign players is getting worse in the premiership and as a result will always affect the national team.when I first started watching football I always believed we would win the Euros or the world cup in my lifetime how wrong could I have been.it's depressing watching England now a days thank god I have had spurs to watch over those years otherwise I would have gone mad.some great memories over the years sadly not matched by watching England.
For years we've been trying to make England play like Spain and the like when we don't have the players for it, instead of playing to our strengths. We then compound the error by deciding that we're only going to employ English managers who are not generally among the best in the business (to put it mildly) and don't know how to make teams play like Spain, even if they did have the players for it! In many ways the problem is firstly with the FA, and secondly with the managers they appoint (I'm really worried that when Spurs players go on England duty they "de-evolve") and only thirdly with the players. I used to blame the players mainly but the more I think about it the more I think they don't really have a chance under this regime. Sure there's certain players I'll really criticise, but mainly because they shouldn't be anywhere near the team in the first place and performing as you might expect.
