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Will Rollason

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40 minutes ago, 054123 said:

Is it wrong to think that this team as whole is boring?

When these 3 dominate a tournament, I’ll get excited.

 

I find them boring. Playing two holding midfielders is conservative and pragmatic and is winning games.  Five years ago England lost to Iceland and struggled to pass a football. Mr Southgate has improved England tactically. Youth is really given a chance.  He has done better in tournaments than every England manager since Terry Venables. His teams eke and grind out wins. His side has beaten the very good like Spain. His teams won't dominate tournaments but he isn't Graham Taylor, or McClaren or Fabio. He is boringly better than that. 

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45 minutes ago, 054123 said:

Is it wrong to think that this team as whole is boring?

When these 3 dominate a tournament, I’ll get excited.

 

If you find England boring god knows how you find watching City!

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13 minutes ago, Cowshed said:

I find them boring. Playing two holding midfielders is conservative and pragmatic and is winning games.  Five years ago England lost to Iceland and struggled to pass a football. Mr Southgate has improved England tactically. Youth is really given a chance.  He has done better in tournaments than every England manager since Terry Venables. His teams eke and grind out wins. His side has beaten the very good like Spain. His teams won't dominate tournaments but he isn't Graham Taylor, or McClaren or Fabio. He is boringly better than that. 

If we have an average or poor euros with this squad then he should be sacked and probably will be.  I just then wonder if he will regret never getting Foden, Grealish, Sterling, Mount and Kane on the pitch together.  
 

Mount and Foden either side of Henderson in midfield could definitely work as they both can do the work without the ball that is needed.  Then when we have the ball we have 5 players extremely comfortable on the ball going forward.  I wonder if the french or Spanish mentality with this squad would be to do that and try to dominate games.  

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58 minutes ago, Port Said Red said:

Some of his passing last night was poor and Chilwell dug him out a couple of times, but I don't think that is indicative of all his performances at England level. I don't have any stats to back up that impression.

He's now played in 3 tournaments and made virtually no impression against mostly bang average sides - Wales, Iceland, Sweden, Panama etc.  In my eyes if he doesn't turn up this time it's terminal and there are many other players that jump over him and get proper chances to show they can do it.  No one can honestly say he is miles better than Rashford, Grealish, Foden, Mount, Maddison, Sancho etc. It could be an issue similar to Ginola had with France.  Better player than Djorkaeff but Djorkaeff has a World Cup winners medal and Euros winners medal and Ginola has diddly squat.

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6 minutes ago, And Its Smith said:

If we have an average or poor euros with this squad then he should be sacked and probably will be.  I just then wonder if he will regret never getting Foden, Grealish, Sterling, Mount and Kane on the pitch together.  
 

Mount and Foden either side of Henderson in midfield could definitely work as they both can do the work without the ball that is needed.  Then when we have the ball we have 5 players extremely comfortable on the ball going forward.  I wonder if the french or Spanish mentality with this squad would be to do that and try to dominate games.  

Yep or even 4231 if he wanted to stay a bit conservative and have Mount play a deeper B2B role. These were the perfect games to try it anyway and GS didn’t. That practical approach will work against Spain, Germany, Belgium and France. Problem is you will see them quite late in a tournament. England need more to beat the middling nations like Poland, Iceland and Croatia who will sit back against England. Need more than one way to play. 
 

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11 minutes ago, And Its Smith said:

If we have an average or poor euros with this squad then he should be sacked and probably will be.  I just then wonder if he will regret never getting Foden, Grealish, Sterling, Mount and Kane on the pitch together.  
 

Mount and Foden either side of Henderson in midfield could definitely work as they both can do the work without the ball that is needed.  Then when we have the ball we have 5 players extremely comfortable on the ball going forward.  I wonder if the french or Spanish mentality with this squad would be to do that and try to dominate games.  

Deschamps with a better squad frequently plays counter attack. France generally had less of the ball than their opponents when they won the 2018 world cup.

 

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51 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Got to say I haven’t watched any of the England games, bar 5 or 10 minutes channel-hopping.  I rarely watch PL either these days.  I love the EFL and watch as much as that as I can.

Quite a few do prefer the lesser quality of football.

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3 hours ago, Red_Alligator said:

I agree Bill. In international terms, they're very ordinary.Too many people get sucked into the media hype about just how good they are. They may well be the best that we have, but that doesn't make them the world beaters they're portrayed to be by the media frenzy. 

They are ranked as one of the best 5 teams in the world by FIFA rankings whether you agree with that or not, we also got to the last four in the last world cup so they must be a bit better than ordinary though watching them sometimes it's hard to see why we are ranked so highly.

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Fairly typical england performance that could have happened at any point in the last 30 years. 
they may be hard working pros, but poland without lewandowski arent great, and they really had us rattled.

at some point if you are going to do well in a tournament you are going to come up against france spain and germany... if it was  that defence and keeper against france then it doesnt bare thinking about, they would be torn to bits.

foden and grealish are the future, and kane is a fine finisher, albeit with little pace. Oh well!

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3 hours ago, Red_Alligator said:

I agree Bill. In international terms, they're very ordinary.Too many people get sucked into the media hype about just how good they are. They may well be the best that we have, but that doesn't make them the world beaters they're portrayed to be by the media frenzy. 

Depends on your definition of “ordinary” imo. England are one of the “better” sides in world football and with the team we have should be reaching the last 8 of any competition we enter so that is better than ordinary in my view without being world beaters.

The problem I think is stupidly inflated expectation levels of fans and media who expect us to obliterate teams like Poland who are full of decent players playing in top leagues around Europe. They aren’t a team you can expect to give a hammering to even though we were far better than them first half without enough cutting edge.

The fact that Poland lined up with a back 5 to start with in the strictest sense of the term despite having a decent side of their own indicates to me that Paolo Sousa who is no mug didn’t think he was playing an “ordinary” team last night.

Knocking the England football team is a bigger national  sport than football itself.

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4 minutes ago, Simon bristol said:

Fairly typical england performance that could have happened at any point in the last 30 years. 
they may be hard working pros, but poland without lewandowski arent great, and they really had us rattled.

at some point if you are going to do well in a tournament you are going to come up against france spain and germany... if it was  that defence and keeper against france then it doesnt bare thinking about, they would be torn to bits.

foden and grealish are the future, and kane is a fine finisher, albeit with little pace. Oh well!

So it’s fine for Germany to get done by North Macedonia or for France to draw in Ukraine (I think) but England beating “hard working pros” playing in Europe’s top leagues is not good enough?

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5 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

So it’s fine for Germany to get done by North Macedonia or for France to draw in Ukraine (I think) but England beating “hard working pros” playing in Europe’s top leagues is not good enough?

Spain drew at home to Greece as well. Why do people think we should easily beat every team we play against? Bizarre.

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2 minutes ago, Super said:

Spain drew at home to Greece as well. Why do people think we should easily beat every team we play against? Bizarre.

As I briefly mentioned upthread, there's only us, Denmark, Italy and (weirdly) Armenia who have 3 wins from 3.

Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia have all dropped points against teams that they, and we, would be expected to beat.

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England are a really good side. You only have to look at the rankings and the sides we've beaten over the past few years. We have some really good players - Kane, Foden, Rashford, TAA, Sterling, Grealish, Maddison etc. Basically all players who are top quality in the PL. We are short in central defence no doubt. We also have some really promising young players like Sancho, Bellingham, Greenwood, Saka & Mount. We have players like Oxlaide-Chamberlain and Trippier who can barely make the squad yet on their day are very handy.

The real question is whether Southgate can put this together to get us into a final or win something. Personally I think a top manager would be able to but as much as I like Southgate I can't see it myself.

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7 minutes ago, Northern Red said:

As I briefly mentioned upthread, there's only us, Denmark, Italy and (weirdly) Armenia who have 3 wins from 3.

Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia have all dropped points against teams that they, and we, would be expected to beat.

Ah, but they will all be brilliant when it matters so they are allowed to................the fact that England haven't dropped points against teams we have been expected to beat only goes to show how ordinary we are apparently. If people just accepted, based on the players we have, that we are one of the better international sides but not THE BEST, based on the players we don't have, they might just be able to sit down and enjoy the odd game here and there!!

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29 minutes ago, Alex_BCFC said:

England are a really good side. You only have to look at the rankings and the sides we've beaten over the past few years. We have some really good players - Kane, Foden, Rashford, TAA, Sterling, Grealish, Maddison etc. Basically all players who are top quality in the PL. We are short in central defence no doubt. We also have some really promising young players like Sancho, Bellingham, Greenwood, Saka & Mount. We have players like Oxlaide-Chamberlain and Trippier who can barely make the squad yet on their day are very handy.

The real question is whether Southgate can put this together to get us into a final or win something. Personally I think a top manager would be able to but as much as I like Southgate I can't see it myself.

We do have a hell of a lot of talent but it isn't balanced in positions. E.g we've got a host of very good attacking midfielders and wide forwards, but not a lot further back in midfield. Several top quality right backs, so much so that Alexander-Arnold was left out this time and Wan Bissaka can't get a sniff of a callup, but no standout centre half that you could build a defence around.

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18 minutes ago, Northern Red said:

We do have a hell of a lot of talent but it isn't balanced in positions. E.g we've got a host of very good attacking midfielders and wide forwards, but not a lot further back in midfield. Several top quality right backs, so much so that Alexander-Arnold was left out this time and Wan Bissaka can't get a sniff of a callup, but no standout centre half that you could build a defence around.

Like I said the only position I would like to see is a decent CB to partner Maguire (basically a Stones but without the mistakes). In a dream world you would have a Kante type player too. But overall I'd say 9 of the 11 positions we have real quality there to match the best.

No teams are perfect - we are capable of beating others similar ranked teams. However at a tournament I don't think I trust Southgate to outsmart the top teams whereas a top manager would give us a much better chance. But I think the capability is there. So I think the issue is more manager based than the 1 or 2 top players we miss.

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51 minutes ago, Northern Red said:

We do have a hell of a lot of talent but it isn't balanced in positions. E.g we've got a host of very good attacking midfielders and wide forwards, but not a lot further back in midfield. Several top quality right backs, so much so that Alexander-Arnold was left out this time and Wan Bissaka can't get a sniff of a callup, but no standout centre half that you could build a defence around.

Did actually wonder whether WB could actually play CB as he is a superb defender just going forward he isn't that great.

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1 hour ago, Numero Uno said:

So it’s fine for Germany to get done by North Macedonia or for France to draw in Ukraine (I think) but England beating “hard working pros” playing in Europe’s top leagues is not good enough?

No. Poland have 1 world class player who was out injured, and deserved a draw against our lot.

those other countries have won multiple world cups and euros, they have earned the right to the occasional bad result, im sure i heard germany hadnt lost a home qualifier since the 5-1 game in munich, which is 20 years ago.

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4 minutes ago, Super said:

Did actually wonder whether WB could actually play CB as he is a superb defender just going forward he isn't that great.

I think he's played on the right side of a back 3 for United on the very odd occasion but never as a CB in a 2. You'd definitely think he has all the attributes.

The irony about him not being great attacking is that he started out as a winger!

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6 minutes ago, Simon bristol said:

No. Poland have 1 world class player who was out injured, and deserved a draw against our lot.

those other countries have won multiple world cups and euros, they have earned the right to the occasional bad result, im sure i heard germany hadnt lost a home qualifier since the 5-1 game in munich, which is 20 years ago.

Why? They barely created anything and were gifted their goal.

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2 hours ago, Numero Uno said:

Depends on your definition of “ordinary” imo. England are one of the “better” sides in world football and with the team we have should be reaching the last 8 of any competition we enter so that is better than ordinary in my view without being world beaters.

The problem I think is stupidly inflated expectation levels of fans and media who expect us to obliterate teams like Poland who are full of decent players playing in top leagues around Europe. They aren’t a team you can expect to give a hammering to even though we were far better than them first half without enough cutting edge.

The fact that Poland lined up with a back 5 to start with in the strictest sense of the term despite having a decent side of their own indicates to me that Paolo Sousa who is no mug didn’t think he was playing an “ordinary” team last night.

Knocking the England football team is a bigger national  sport than football itself.

Yes, I do agree about the media Numero - they build up the quality of our players, which in turn leads to unrealistic expectations from fans. In the over 50 years that I have been watching the England team, I think I can safely say that I'm much more realistic in my expectations and am simply looking forward - one day - to being very pleasantly surprised!

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1 hour ago, Simon bristol said:

No. Poland have 1 world class player who was out injured, and deserved a draw against our lot.

those other countries have won multiple world cups and euros, they have earned the right to the occasional bad result, im sure i heard germany hadnt lost a home qualifier since the 5-1 game in munich, which is 20 years ago.

So a 2-1 win is a bad result against a team of players who play in Europe’s top leagues? Really?

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14 hours ago, Robbored said:

There’s more than possession to good football which should lead to attempts on goal and that’s where England frequently fail.

England scored two goals, first one a very dodgy penalty and the second a cracking effort from defender Maguire. How many shot on target did England have?

I honestly can’t remember the last time that England really impressed me...........:dunno:

What made it a "dodgy" penalty?

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12 hours ago, And Its Smith said:

If we have an average or poor euros with this squad then he should be sacked and probably will be.  I just then wonder if he will regret never getting Foden, Grealish, Sterling, Mount and Kane on the pitch together.  
 

Mount and Foden either side of Henderson in midfield could definitely work as they both can do the work without the ball that is needed.  Then when we have the ball we have 5 players extremely comfortable on the ball going forward.  I wonder if the french or Spanish mentality with this squad would be to do that and try to dominate games.  

What's an average or poor euros? I think we need to reign in expectations first

We haven't got to a semis of the euros for 25 years and that's the only time we've got past the second round

many will say that Quarter Finals is the minimum expectation, but historically it's like expecting City to make playoffs. It's nice, and its the goal, but it's not our given right.

I thought Rice had one of his best games, was very busy and picked pockets and loose balls consistently well. Phillips is a worker too, I dont envisage them both being first choice in the Euros though, maybe Rice more likely.

Stones made a bad touch but the pass from Pope was awful. We were in full control til that moment, and as we often see in football it gave Poland a boost.

We played some good one touch football but we dont move the ball quick enough to break teams down, we'll always play better against teams that attack and leave space.

 

 

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8 hours ago, Simon bristol said:

No. Poland have 1 world class player who was out injured, and deserved a draw against our lot.

those other countries have won multiple world cups and euros, they have earned the right to the occasional bad result, im sure i heard germany hadnt lost a home qualifier since the 5-1 game in munich, which is 20 years ago.

It's only WC qualifiers, they lost at home to Netherlands in Euro 20 qualifying. How many home World Cup qualifiers have we lost since then?

I'll give you a clue... it's less than Germany ? They've also hosted one in that time so one less set of games.

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