If Harry Kane Doesn't recover from his injury in time or is less than fully fit - something that seems to happen to England's best players for every major tournament - then we will have no chance of having a good tournament. I would deem 'good' as reaching a quarter-final personally.
Slimani played 25 minutes for Algeria tonight.... and didn't break down! So maybe we will see him for Newcastle this weekend.
Rafa thinks he has been contributing anyway - by making Gayle play better due to the competition. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/spo...rafa-believes-islam-slimani-positive-14457791 Way to justify loaning a crock!
I thought we looked decent last night. Southgate tbf has looked at what we have got and has tried to think outside of the box. This 3 he's got going with Walker at the back has us looking more progressive going forward when we have the ball. Kane Walker and Sterling are our best players. We need them all available. Kane fit and firing is going to be critical. We can't win it though. We have young talent but miss proper quality. If you look at the Germans, Brazil, Spain their teams have some ridiculous players and many with regular experience of winning big trophies.
Agreed, think Glenn Hoddle touched on it last night but so many options going forwards in the new formation with the wing-backs overlapping and the 2 up top allows one to come short and help the middle 3 and the other to look in behind the defense. Sterling's interview out yesterday was spot on, we need to show the national team a bit more love. We always go on about how we don't have the players to win a tournament but then get super upset when we get knocked out (OK vs Iceland - I'll give you that one). If we could go into the tournament like Wales/Iceland did the Euros - with no pressure, no expectations etc and just try and enjoy what clearly is a new start for the England team. We are a young team now finding our way under Southgate. Most senior player last night was Sterling and hes managed 2 major tournaments for England so far.
If that was a decent game then England are not good enough and will be back home before they realize they are there....
I have little confidence in our ability to do anything once we get there but we were decent against Italy. It could be worse, we could have failed to qualify.
Ultimately we have scraped a win against a Dutch team not going to the World Cup and a draw against an Italian team not going to the World Cup. I still don’t think we have the creativity required for the top level of the game or the game knowledge picked up from playing at the top level. We should see how well the kids have been doing in the last few years and realise that unless we do something about the number of foreign players playing in the PL then those kids won’t develop as their growth will be stunted by playing at Scunthorpe, Accrington etc and the England team will enjoy the same success we have had over the last 20 years.
It was a case of Italy being ****ter, but they sit deeper than most other defences will on the national scene. Our tactics didn't suit the game massively, but can be effective at the World Cup. It's massive that Vardy, not Kane, starts though cos there won't be 10 shots a game for him to have And Joe Hart shouldn't be starting, surely that's not going to happens
My starting 11 for World Cup would be: Pickford Tarkowski Maguire Mawson Walker Rose Dier Ox Kane Sterling Alli I don’t think Mawson will even go though. I don’t see point of taking Trippier if you take Gomez? Surely the bonus is you get cover for two roles so you can take an extra midfielder or striker? I could happily swap out Ox for Lallana if he got a few games under his belt as he has never let us down.
