Well that was ****ing ****. Roll on the world cup runners up in our first game. What could possibly go wrong.
A lot to learn says Gareth. Tournament starts next week mate, all the best with that. Learning should have been done months/years ago. These games should have been irrelevant. Wright and Cole in the studio haven't got a clue who he going to pick.
fair enough, they 'were only friendlies' and nowhere near what we expect to be the team but they were two, painful to watch, games. rashford, good player but really needs to learn he cannot do it all on his own, noticed a few times with him that his game changes once he gets a goal as he then starts to bring others into the game more and he himself becomes more effective. i honestly hope southgate has used both these games to experiment with a couple of things and his line up and tactics will ba vastly different once the 'real' games begin, no confidence at all if we play that way.
yup, and that is what worries me...these were both fairly straight forward wins and should have given the lads a decent warm up (no disrespect meant to austria and romania mind) but they just seemed to huff and puff everywhere as if southgate just threw them out there with no real instructions but a 'show me what you can do' order.
I admit I haven't watched Villa in recent seasons ( can't stand the ****ers) but I see Grealish strolling round the pitch and waiting til his next 'cameo role' chance appears, and to me he's not a team player, he's a Hollywood player, he wants to shine despite how it benefits the team. I see him pick the ball up in similar positions to where Gazza did, but all Grealish wants to do is win a foul, whereas Gazza would want to create a chance, carry the ball into the danger area, and make something happen, and he wanted to score goals, or create something for others to score. I don't see that with Grealish.
Should have been a relaxing 180 mins of football, nice and relaxed. A 3 nil and a 4 - 1 maybe. Nice and settled, knowing our best XI and roll on Croatia, full of confidence. But no, it's typical England. A major player gets injured, the press will question the keeper/defender/midfielder/attacker. No doubt they will have some sort of porn video/affair/dodgy tweets/compromising photos in their back pocket to release on Friday. I wouldn't support any other country
Well said marra, he's no where near gazza class, good player in today's game, but I remember when men were men
Fast forward to 1 min 10 seconds... https://www.google.com/search?q=gaz...ate=ive&vld=cid:7a75032b,vid:iVLBQAcmJCE,st:0
'one eyed willy from the Goonies' And he still hits the bar and beats him in the competition despite all the piss taking. All for a tenner No characters like that in the game any more. Too sterile and over coached imo.
Stopped reading at that point. Grealish has been top class for a couple of years now. I’m not comparing him to Gazza either.
Bill Shankly once said football is a simple game complicated by idiots ... ... or words to that effect. Southgate is just another over cautious tactician who's forgotten that.
Grealish's performance against Romania seems to be dividing opinion on Twitter. The BBC are saying this morning that he 'ran the show' in yesterday's game and that he surely must start on Sunday. Apart from a neat one-two and the run (and dive) that won the penalty, I thought he did very little to warrant a place in the squad, let alone the starting 11. Everytime he picked up the ball and you wanted him to run at defenders he offloaded it before hurting the opposition. There were no passes that created problems for Romania, most were short sideways or backwards passes and (although an important part of the game) only served, at most, to retain possession. Surely we want more from a No. 10 and Mason Mount must be ahead of him. He certainly didn't 'run the show' for me. Am I wrong?
I know where you're coming from. Not a great deal of end product yesterday. There's a lot of the primadonna about him. You can't knock his brilliant play for Villa or the natural talent though. If he doesn't start, what a sub he'd be coming off the bench.
Think he’s overrated myself. That dive is also something I detest about the game. I don’t mind players waiting fir contact and going down as much, but initiating the contact as he did (and does) as does Kane and many others, annoys the hell out of me he’s not half the player that Mount and Foden are. And I’m pretty sure you can’t play all three. sadly the press want him in and Gareth appears to oblige just fir that. This “he wins a lot of free kicks” bullshit annoys me too. Nobody says “he gets fouled a lot” so he basically cheats! I wonder how the bbc and the England fans backing him would react if we lose the semi or the final because a player hooks his leg around our defender and throws himself to the ground? The vitriol would likely be Maradona handball-esque!! As for “ran the show” he got marked, by the public, as a 7! If my midfielder is running the show I want a 9/10 performance!! 7/10 is what I expect as a minimum.
I came to terms with diving a long time ago. I don't like it but I can live with it. With Grealish though its verging on the pathetic and seems to be a very large part of his game. But its not that which annoys me most about him. Commentators and journalists are going on like he's our best player and, the dive aside, his contribution was minimal. Ward-Prowse, Rice, Kalvin Phillips, Rashford, Sancho all seemed to be more deserving of a place than him but don't get half the praise in the press. Are people impressed by his floppy hair and his rolled down socks or something? Because they are the only things that make him stand out for me.