This Lawton article makes this suggestion and he may have a point. While watching the Malta game I said to the very lovely Mrs Godders that watching England was every bit as frustrating as watching Southampton. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...gland-Southampton-international-football.html
England have been like this in living memory. We will almost inevitably qualify because we are a good side....it would take a very strange draw in qualifying for us to be at risk of going out. We have a large pool of decent players to draw on....compared with some smaller countries....but have only occasional top drawer players. A comparison with Southampton is a fair one....though it would be nice if Saints qualified for every competition. I thought France was like Saints when they were held to a 0-0 draw despite 34 shots.
I have never been embarrassed about supporting Saints. Nor have I ever been secretly relieved when we have been knocked out of a major tournament.
More like Liverpool/Spurs because that's who the majority of the players play for and we live off the past
England can count themselves fortunate not to be in the same group as Spain. Then I feel England would be playng second fiddle. And our old favourites have France, Bulgaria and another useful team, so if England had been pitched in with France, they would have had an uphill struggle to gain automatic quaification.
I disagree totally. Southampton's problem is that they are too unselfish and always taking the easy pass rather than the creative one. England's problem is that the whole attacking unit are very selfish from attacking midfielders* through to wingers and strikers. Whoever they put up front, attacking midfield or on the wings just will not pass keeping hold of the ball trying to work an opening for themselves. Alli, Kane prime examples but as seen this week Oxlade Chamberlain did the same. It is no different from Sturridge and others though. You can argue that they are under pressure to take every opportunity for themselves because there is a lot of competition within the options for selection but this is mainly because there aren't many stand out picks and thus we have loads of good but not world class players that know they have others waiting for an opportunity are as good or not far behind them in quality. I would suggest it is much more to do with selfishness though in that English football from the top flight through to the national team is now just a big brand business and each player has their brand which they focus on more than the team game. *Lallana is one exception who you could argue is too unselfish and is always looking to create a chance for others when he is often in a really good position to take a chance himself. The other difference with England and Saints is that Saints (I haven't seen them this season so maybe this opinion is outdated already) are much more prone to passing the ball around without risk and thus not being able to penetrate defences whereas England's problem is that once England get possession all the attacking options sprint past the man with the ball without trying to find space and therefore the pass to them becomes impossible. An example the other night was when Rashford got the ball and our superb??? right back Kyle Walker hit warp speed leaving Rashford a millisecond to be able to get the pass to him (if he happens to be looking the right way and be able to see the England player flash past him.) I felt sorry for Rashford taking the blame for losing the ball when there were opposition players right around him and no pass on. For me Walker was much more to blame there and if Rashford had just cleared it he would have been slaughtered for that too. So England's problem is that they don't pass and too many players get ahead of the ball in poor areas. Southampton's problem is that they pass too much and always the easy option.
Saints like England? Nah, people care about Saints, don't know anybody who cares about international football
I am a very passionate England supporter and care immensely. Pisses me off that the players only care about their own headlines and glory. Wish we could somehow get the players to work well together and think of the national team rather than just their sponsorship deal earnings. If we could get our lot to play as a team like NI and Wales have done then we would do well. Instead we have 3,4,5 times as good a squad choice as Wales and NI yet we only play marginally better. They play above their "on paper" ability while we play below our "on paper" ability.
I think players don't really care as much as they used to/maybe should due to a host of reasons. It makes sense for the smaller nations to care more as qualifying for major tournaments is a bit of a novelty for them. England usually qualify pretty comfortably then either do OK in the tournament (like under Sven) and get ridiculed or do badly in the tournament (like last time losing to Iceland no idea who the manager was for that one) and get ridiculed.
