Worrying thing ahead of tomorrow night for me is it was a case of Spanish-based players - mainly Varane and Umtiti - beating EPL players. Tomorrow night, it's two very talented Spanish-based midfielders against EPL. The level is just a bit different. It's why Real, not Man City, win the CL. My only hope is they're knackered.
Its not as if Croatia are unbeatable...they lost World Cup qualifiers to both Turkey and Iceland in the past twelve months. Southgate will have our younger fitter players pressing them and on the front foot hopefully.
I hope not he’s been very good so far. If he can finish a few chances then great but if he keeps doing the same great job for the TEAM - the real England fans will continue to appreciate it
Keep on saying it loud enough and you might persuade some to agree with you. Having watched football for a long, long time I have this old fashioned view that to be classed as a good player you have to do more than just run around a lot and be a nuisance. Headless chickens can do that but they don’t play for England or at least shouldn’t. Also keep trying to quell debate and go for the Ashley model of blind acceptance and we too could end up as has beens and also rans. Heaven forbid anyone should look to improve things by having a forward player who can run around, be a nuisance AND score goals. I know, unbelievable.
Ahh, I see, speaking again for the silent majority. Wouldn’t have any statistics there to back up that claim... Thought not.
Well if we reverse that round can you name more professional people who have not backed than backed him? I thought not. You’ll see the light eventually. We’ve overachieved already. Imagine if we go to the final or even win, you’re going to look even more silly than you do now.
Thought Sterling was very poor in the group games. Not really moving much and when he got the ball he was very unproductive. On a number of occasions he put our midfield and defence under pressure by losing it too easily. He has been better in the knockout games as an integral part of the high press and showing much more energy. However have to say I was expecting more from him in the way of creating chances, rather than just creating space. Don't think that bringing Loftus-Cheek or Rashford on from start though would be a good move. Save them for if we are up (former) or down (latter) in last 30mins of game.
Thought Lukaku's positioning for crosses being thrown in was awful. One diagonal ball from De Bruyne he looked like he didn't know whether to head it or try and bring it down so did neither. Once Mertens was brought on and getting some good balls over he seemed to be continually out of position. Think he might have just got pissed off with making the effort when Chadli was doing the crossing as I dont think he managed to get one decent ball into the area - either hitting first defender or far too strong. France looked very solid at the back after the first 20mins. IF we manage to get to the final they may be a bit too good for us.
