However, you don't play one set or the other. Some of the players yesterday will be fine if used with most of our starting eleven. That's true of most teams....would Man City be as good if they fielded an eleven of non-starters? On paper perhaps, but not in actuality. That's why lower teams can beat a top side in a cup competition where too many changes are made. We lost 1-0 in a match where there were advantages to it going either way. If that game mattered i.e. a knockout, Southgate would have thrown on the heavy guns. He wanted to win, but not enough to risk injuries or yellow cards to important players. Be great to have two excellent teams, but you only play one....with some strategic subs.
Sod it. I knew I should have used blue. My point is that England, unlike a smaller Premier League club, doesn't have a dead cert 11 and then some poor sods who normally sit displaying the sponsor's name. They are all international standard players. Had Rashford not put his boots on the wrong feet last night we'd have been talking about playing Japan on Monday. I felt sorry for the team last night. It was like a testimonial being played by a bunch of players who desperately wanted to impress the manager. Felt even more sorry for the poor saps who had paid good money to watch that dross. I cannot accept that this was a "weakened" side. Not as good as the team that played last time out, but not chopped liver either which is how they seem to have been presented in the media.
I kind of agree, and I didn’t think before kickoff that it looked a bad side to put out in a dead rubber. The fact is though, that they didn’t really gel in the same way the teams in the 2 previous games did, and were analogous to the sort of show that Saints put on in the League Cup against Wolves last season. I don’t mind that Southgate put that side out, because all the squad deserve to be there and it was good that most of them have now had a game,so Southgate can better assess his plans for the next game. Having said that, the thought of Danny Rose or TAA trying to pin Juan Cuadrado down fills me with a bit of dread!
Depends which Cuadrado turns up, the one who was taken off after 31 mins in their first game or the one who scored in their second game. A possible clue, Rodriguez didn't play in the first game.....
Bingo! Cuadrado is hit and miss. Rodriguez is pure class. The other midfielder is in between those two. It’s going to be a tough game, but a winnable game. Sweden, Iceland, Nigeria. Senegal et al would all be tough games.
Harsh. His set pieces were crap. But otherwise he was okay. Everyone was okay. No one was crap, no one was great.
What makes you say that? Do you think Rashford missed on purpose? Just because it wasn’t a great game, and the players didn’t gel, doesn’t mean they didn’t want to win it.
It’s doesnt really matter now. Spain lost in there opening match I believe and still went on to win the World Cup....
Of course they didn't...a win would have been acceptable as it would mean we play Japan and continue the winning habit. On the other hand, there were advantages to losing as well.....so Southgate was not going to risk all by throwing Kane on towards the end (as he probably would have done in a knock out). Instructing a team to lose would be very difficult....goes against the grain for the players. Southgate would have accepted a win, but took no risks in a game like this....and ended up pretty happy about it.
Some of the build up play was bewildering. And at the end, where Belguim just kept playing risky back passes that we never chased down or pressured. We did not want to win that game. Did we 'throw' the game, no. Did we try to win, again, no.
Way too many player changes, minimal effort to change things when not going our way. I'm not blaming the players individually, I thought most played reasonably well. But if that is the level of Rashford's finishing, I wouldn't be playing him again in a hurry.
My team for Colombia: Pickford Young Maguire Stones Walker Trippier Henderson Lingard Alli/rlc Rashford Kane
Whether they wanted to win or not the draw looks better on our side of the fence than the other. If we can't beat Colombia it doesn't matter but if we fail there we wouldn't have gone much further in the other half!
