I listened to this on the wireless driving back from London, where some thoughtless twat has me on my feet running meetings in the Heathrow Marriott yesterday evening and all day today. Waddle and Mills had England playing faster and sharper than usual but with little in front of goal. Have to admit I didn't even realise Ali was playing until he scored, or that Walcott was on the pitch at all until half time, at which stage I was so bored I put some music on. I am inclined to agree with your analysis.
Blimey, the situation must be bad if Col can't find any positives. But I agree, having the minnows in the competition makes for a boring match as their only ambition is to concede as few as possible.
1 0 to mexico after an apparently dreadful penalty call Ashley young could learn something about diving from the mexicans
in the play offs for the last world cup the Mexicans won 9 3 over two legs this could be seen as an improvement under alan hudsons management
First half England's movement was pretty good, especially Lingard and they did move the ball quickly at times. However, second half they completely lost momentum as Malta sat back trying not to concede more goals. Southgate put this down to the players sub-consciously saving themselves for Tuesday as they knew the game was won. Shame for the 81,000 that took the time to turn out and support them in huge numbers as always.
Oh look - England scored - only twice. Against a minnow team. How sad. They can only score twice, against that side? At home! That's how low England has become. Whereas Portugal scored 6 the other day. That's where England is. And in other news - Conor Washington missed the goal - again. And didn't score - again.
Seems liked England had a dull match against Malta. I enjoyed an enjoyable roller coaster of a match with the 3-2 Poland win over Denmark. An impressive hatric from Lewandowski followed by a wonderful headed own goal by Glik and then a defensive farce. Thee was a full house of over 56k in attendance with a great atmosphere. However, the most enjoyable experience was being allowed to stand in the lower sector directly behind the goal. It was a hark back to good old days and a much more enjoyable pure footballing experience. We should really push to introduce safe standing at LR.
Only able to watch the first half and this makes mores sense now. But for their keeper rising to the occasion, we'd have had at least 4 at HT. Did not see the second half.
In recent times Italy have beaten Malta 1-0 twice. International minnows are generally well organised and try to avoid losing by a big margin.
I heard John Hartson interviewed a few weeks ago and he was still cock a hoop from Wales brilliant tournament in France. He more or less said they would piss this group and everybody else was fighting for second place. Wales were the team to beat, apparently. Maybe they still will be but drawing at home to Georgia doesn't instill fear into the other teams in the group.
