Even the fact we are a good team now this still ****ing happens (I'm talking spurs and England!!)Tottenham Hotspur > England Hotspur.
Bit harsh on lallana as he did play well overall. Take that late goal away and that was a great performance. Very Tottenhamesque!Sterling shouldn't be let near an England shirt - complete ****e. Lallana not much better 2nd half.
It's crazy how that area has been our strength for years and now it's our weakness!The fact is our defence is utter ****e. We knew it before the tournament began.
If Smalling and Cahill is the best we've got!....
Dier, rose and Walker were excellent. Alli was probably a 6 out of 10. Kane wasn't awful but probably only a 5. Definitely not one of his better games. I sometimes feel he tries too hard to score a goal and then he gets a bit selfish and almost gets blinkered into shooting from anywhere.
I think yesterday was an excellent example of the fine lines that separate success and failure in football and how along with playing well you also need the assistance of lady luck.
If we look at the 2 matches in Englands group, and the performances of the 4 teams, England played the best football and Wales got the best result. We created a number of good chances and on a number of occasions we almost struck the ball too well and too often gave the Russian keeper a relatively easy save to make. The Russians scored a good goal to equalise but it was one of those headers that could have drifted over or wide but dropped in. Compare that to Wales who also played well, but could easily have been a goal down in 3 minutes, but for Bens brilliant clearance, the game then ebbs and flows between the 2 teams with both sides having periods in the ascendency, but with 10 minutes to go Ramsey completely miss-controls the ball and it all falls into the path of Robson Kanu who miss hits his shot and it rolls into the bottom corner and Wales have a winner, then in possibly the best Slovakian move of the match they create a headed chance that flies past the keeper hits the inside of the post and stays out. I am not knocking Wales or their performance I think that they shaded the match, but they also got good luck at vital points in the match, which England didn’t.
Some say that you make your own luck, but in tournament football England are massively overdue some. I don’t know how many mirrors have been broken at FA HQ but I really don’t recall a lucky England win in a tournament since Spain on Penalties in 1996.
Seriously gutting result for England given how we dominated the game. Kane was below-par but the service from Sterling was poor throughout to be fair to him. Lallana had some good movement in the first half but faded a bit in the second. The game was crying out for a bit of a shift with Vardy coming on to change the style a bit but of course we saw mostly defensive and conservative subs from Roy when only 1 goal up which with England in a tournament game is never safe.
On the plus side, both fullbacks were excellent, Rooney adapted quite well to his midfield role, and Dier was quite assured. On another day you might see more from Kane and Alli - there were a good few situations that nearly came to fruition to be fair. What was odd to me was that Kane was allowed to drift out of the box when he's the only real box-effective forward on the pitch. Roy needs to be braver and play Kane and Vardy in a proper 2 (not like what we saw against Portugal) if he's really going to go for it.
Keep the back 5 as is, then
Dier
Rooney Wilshere
Alli
Kane Vardy
Otherwise play a defensive game properly instead of shoehorning 5 attacking players into the lineup because you feel you should.
Also, Kane on corners. Just, why? With Rooney, Alli, and Lallana also on the pitch. Why?
About average for the BBC, given the pathetic nature of their so-called journalism.Was astounded to see BBC describe Rooney as man of the match.
I thought he was England's worst player by some margin !
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