England v Italy 2300BST

I think Johnson was better than Baines. Also, Henderson was better than Gerrard!

 

Henderson was better than Gerrard for me, and Johnson probably deserved a 6.

 

Johnson was 'good' solely because Italy overwhelmingly attacked on the other side. Johnson was up against Marchisio who constantly drifted in the middle, and Chiellini who is a centre back and rarely ventured forward, and when he did, he was obviously incapable of doing anything remotely dangerous in the attack.

 

Sorry, I was more referring to Wilshere and his career and the expectations. Same with Barkley so far. Sure some nice flicks and tricks and positivity and the media go over the top. If Rooney had come off the bench and put in the same performance as Barkley it would have been deemed disappointing.

 

I think I am the only person who thinks that Sterling's performance has been highly overrated. He had that one shot early on that missed by the way! He put in a good cross that someone should have chased down, and he put a great pass to Rooney for the goal. Other than that, all I can remember him doing is running around a lot but mostly ending up trying to beat one man too many.

I genuinely think Lallana would have given a more mature and ultimately more effective performance.

Funnily enough, the overall performance was a bit like watching Saints; a lot of possession but everything was too slow against a well-disciplined team. And in the end, undone by a counter attack.

And, Phil Nevill by the way. I stopped listening to what he was saying after about 5 minutes. The monotony of his staccato, 3 word sentences drove me batty!

 

Agree agree agree!

 

Well obviously Lff wasn't the only person to think Sterling's performance was overrated.

I'm not sure anyone is saying that he played exceptionally, but that he was the best England player. Which, on the whole, I think I agree with.

 

I just can't believe we don't have a proper defensive midfielder available to us. Gerrard an Henderson as a holding two are just not solid enough for me.

 

Phil Jones in a pinch, but I can't see him playing there really.

 

We should have taken Jack Cork.

Dissapointing to lose, but really a better England performance than we've seen in previous WCs and Euros of late. We attacked with numbers and pace, which was quite refreshing. Don' thinkn we get enough players behind the ball when defending though, also didn't close down quick enough.

Lambert should have come on for Roony.

 

Sterling had pace and he moved with the ball well at his feet. But the quality of his delivery wasn't there. His end product was very poor. It's extremely harsh to give Rooney 4. He missed a big chance he should have put away, but 4 is silly when he was played on the left and created a goal. Most of them deserve a 6 rating. The change to make at half time was to move Rooney behind Sturridge, put Sterling out wide to the right and bring Milner or Lallana on for Welbeck. Towards the end he should have brought on Lambert.

 

Great deadpan response, too.

 

Didn't he play for Leeds and Blackburn!

 

England were poor and could not deal with Italy's dominance. It was a game of two poor European sides that need a lot of work to do to get through the group stages.

 

C-, must do better.

 

I'm not sure many are arsed enough about england to bite tbh

 

Pie's trolling advice is always worth listening to.

 

The last ten minutes were taylor-made for Carroll

 

So what you're saying is, Uruguay and Costa Rica have a good chance of getting through. I can't believe the media were calling this the group of death. Uruguay are complete **** apart from up front, and Cavani is out of form and Suarez isn't fit. If Suarez starts against us, someone just needs to kick his knee, hard. And Costa Rica are also ****, just less **** than Uruguay.

 

I disagree; I think it's a group of four good teams, none of whom are good enough to win the World Cup, but all are good nonetheless. Anyone can realistically beat anyone in this group, and I include Costa Rica in that. People aren't all that familiar with their squad, but they have a lot of talent. Note that when they were 1-0 down I said they could take the game to Uruguay and get something if they wanted, and look what they did in the second half. Borges, Bolanos, Campbell, Ruiz, Navas. Great players. And the lad Duarte, who I hadn't heard of before that game, seems to be great too.