Against Iceland!? FFS this sounds bad. I couldn't watch it but what a disaster. I was watching a *****lian beast of a man hold up 2 girls, balanced on a barbell...with his teeth. Seems I was much better off.
England were dire, and it still mystifies me why we're a favourite. My take on it is the players selected are made much, much better by their team-mates with a few exceptions. Kane carries teams, Gordon is one of our best players so does ok, but the likes of Foden, Rice, Walker, get so much time and protection from some of the best in Europe, like Rodri, Silva, Odegaard, Saliba, etc. Then you've got Southgate. If there's no left back available, stop playing a back four. Then even if Shaw is fit, he can play as LCB as well as Branthwaite or Guehi. City players are used to 3 at the back, Walker's just not creative, Trent's a midfielder anyway, Trippier should have been dropped and Dunk shouldn't be there either. Same every tournament - there's a team of "professionals" running England who seemingly don't understand football basics. Southgate's never winning this tournament - and the team is vastly overrated, I'm not sure anyone gets in the France SECOND XI aside from Kane. The 4-3-3 just doesn't make the best of the better players we have. Having Jude will help, as his intelligence and runs cover Kane's constant dropping deep. But that's what he'll play - we know precisely how he'll start, with Pickford, Walker, Stones, Guehi, Trippier, Rice, Bellingham, TAA, Foden, Kane, Saka. But it just lacks balance for me, and we have no identity at all, aside from being ploddy.
I think we have the players. On their day, Kane, Bellingham, Foden, Saka, Stones, Rice are all up there with the best in Europe. Where we struggle is that Southgate can't get a tune out of them. They just look lost when playing together
Fully agree. While you have to be solid to win these tournaments when we go forward we have to do so with more purpose and less of this keep ball stuff. I think we've got to be prepared to mix it up more, get some more balls and bodies into the box on occasion as we've got the attacking quality.
Its an interesting dilemma. International matches are all about keeping possession and probing for weaknesses and then exploiting them. The PL has much less emphasis on possession and the ball is given away cheaply because of the desire to move it quickly. Our players spend a whole season playing at breakneck speed and then have a few weeks to learn how to slow it down and build more carefully. It would be interesting to see how it would work if we just tried to play like teams do in the PL and go for a high press and then moving it quickly when we get possession.
England are a favourite because international football is ****, 95% of countries have absolutely dire teams and by the laws of averages England must be one of the teams that has a chance. Apart from that, England are crap.
