Hard to feel like we haven’t missed our chance honestly. Very frustrated this morning because we are very much in the favourable side of the draw and we may not get this chance again, but we are miles off. The attitude coming out of the camp absolutely stinks as well, they are happy with the way they played yesterday and have heads fully buried in the sand. I have no doubt they will come out the exact same way against Switzerland and we know what will happen if they do. With the players we have we should be confident of making the final, I would be surprised if Switzerland don’t completely thrash us.
That is a decent record with the only bad result being the Croatia loss (can't count Belgium). We beat every side you would expect us to beat apart from Croatia. Which is better than we have done for decades. Southgate is clearly our 2nd most successful manager of all time and has done the hard bit of uniting a divided national team. Btu as others have said, that job is done now and we need someone more tactically astute to take this group to the next level.
TBH, I don't understand the TOTAL negativity. Sure, we've played crap all tournament and are managed by a complete numpty. But what saved us yesterday was a moment of individual brilliance from a player who has the world at his feet. Who was the last England player to come up with something like that just when his country needed it? That goal will go down alongside Owen's wonder goal in France, Platt's stunner against Belgium, Gazza's goal against Scotland in 96, Beckham's free kick against Greece. It was a proper iconic moment. It's also the sort of moment that sparks a team into life. I'm pretty certain Switzerland's reaction when that goal went in was "****'s sake". Despite England's poor performances, they would have been very happy to face Slovakia.
For a bit of context, our knockout games in the previous five tournaments; 2016: Lost to Iceland 2014: Out at group stage (lost to Italy and Uruguay, drew with Costa Rica) 2012: Drew with Italy (lost on pens) 2010: Smashed by Germany 2008: Didn't qualify for tournament
That’s not right, England play every game like it’s a pointless third place playoff. they just win most of them.
Because I watch football for Entertainment. Saints are my team and I put up with a lot of dross out of loyalty. When I watch England I am getting my chance to be one of the glory hunters. It is supposed to be a massive team with incredible players, but watching them play is painful. That goal last night was great, but it did nothing to justify the 95 minutes of horror which went before it - or cancel out the defensive panic of the last 29 minutes!
My point is that people have short memories, and are deluded if they think that just because we have some good Premier League players in our team, we should be beating every nation we play.
yeah, couldn’t agree more. There’s just nothing to admire about it. There’s no beauty or elegance about what England do. It feels like football that could be played by anyone and yet we have the best attacking players in Europe. it’s not the players, it’s the system. I want nothing more than to cheer and celebrate them and if that game had come to life in the 60th or even the 80th it would have been a classic but it was literally a ****ing fluke, we aren’t getting away with that one again.
I think that is not my point. My point is that Southgate has had a reasonable run - but it is also fair to call him lucky. He has not had to play any good sides early. Fine, we can agree he has a good record beating teams he should beat - and some England managers have not. But plenty of England managers in my life have lost to Argentina, Brazil or Germany at their peak - and given really valiant performances. Southgate is not, for me personally, our second best manager of all time. He is definitely the luckiest.
Absolutely. I just want to feel proud of the team. I genuinely don't care where they finish if I get to enjoy the football. I have not enjoyed any of this tournament since the second half of the first game.
right now I think that’s fair. If he shows the ability to fix what is wrong and gets some good performances out of these guys now that could change but he risks doing real harm to how he will be remembered.
How was it a fluke? They had worked on the long throw routine in training and the finish was top class.
Fluke is overstating it, but if you are telling me our plan for remaining in the tournament was a long throw and a successful overhead kick, then my estimation of Southgate has dropped even further. We should not have been tossing long balls into the box in the 95th minute looking for an equaliser.
That goal won't go down as iconic if we lose Saturday which looks likely based on so far. I just don't see the momentum turning and think we'll see more of the same. I'm usually pretty positive regards England but I think the negativity is entirely justified. We've been utterly atrocious and reminiscent of the Hodgson era. As someone said yesterday (Ronnie maybe) I think there is a breakdown of relationship between team and coach and they don't trust each other the way they did in previous tournaments. I also think the team have outgrown Southgate. It's easy to forget that the squad in 2018 & 2021 were nowhere near as good as it is now and expectation was obviously at an all time low when he took over. I think the team largely picked itself back then too which meant we benefitted hugely from the off pitch qualities Southgate brought to these tournaments and allowed him to establish us as one of the top nations. Now we're there however he doesn't have the tactical nous to take the next step to winning. I've always been a fan of Southgate and grateful to him for making tournaments fun again. However I felt at the time that the Qatar WC (where he was unlucky I thought) should have been his last tournament as he'd taken us as far as he can and that seems to be playing out this summer.
I find that bizarre for international tournaments personally. I agree with it for Saints when I'm investing time and money but for the rest of this tournament I'd rather 3 undeserved 1-0 wins than losing a 5-4 classic on Saturday. If we finally win something style might become more important.
All I want is to enjoy the games. Winning a tournament would be lovely, but I care way more about Saints surviving in the premier league. I can't help but compare to Euro 96 when the football was joyous and we had a coach who was willing to change things on the fly. We were unlucky to go out to a fantastic Germany team in the semis - but that is still a better memory than the last Euros when we reached the final. I really hate Southgate's brand of football. It bores the **** out of me. That isn't why I am watching it.
Almost every team that wins a tournament, requires a whole heap of luck in doing so. Italy won two penalty shoot-outs in the last tournament (semis and final). Portugal needed penalties to beat Poland in 2016, and they only got through the group stage as a third placed team. 'Luck' as in getting a slightly favourable draw, is really the thinnest form of luck you can get in tournament football.
This is a real stretch. Sorry. The luck of the draw is literally an English idiom. Luck in who you play is massive when what we are discussing is how many games Southgate has won in knockouts. The metric is: How many games has he won that he should have won? The truth is that most of the games he has won he should have won. Portugal were definitely lucky in 2016 - but when they came up against France in the final, they won it. We were lucky in the last Euros... but when we came up against Italy we failed to win it. And this is not a "slightly favourable draw". All the top seeded teams are on the other side. That is very lucky indeed.
