I’m not going to lie, whilst it would be nice to see England win a major tournament, I think that would be massively overshadowed by Southgate taking it as a vindication of his football. France for all their horrendous negativity were well organised and well drilled, and watching them is bad enough.
NQ I think had a point when he said Switzerland were a superior team with inferior players
Most of the nations are superior teams to England because we’re not the sum of our parts. Southgate is just fortunate that he has so many difference makers at the top end of the pitch to bail him out. I’m convinced a better coach would have won a tournament for us by now however you don’t need to play good football to win a tournament which has been proven on many occasions.
Last edited by Marc Overmars; 07-07-2024 at 10:28 AM.
Nah, that'd be a historical footnote. He's gone at the end of the tournament regardless of what happens, whether he personally takes that as a vindication of his style is an irrelevance. A more modern manager will come in to replace him (I'm hoping for Potter, but we'll see) and make better use of the plethora of talent we have up top which will set us in good stead for the future regardless of the outcome of this particular summer.Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
As long as I’ve been following football there’s been an endless cycle of
New England manager, optimism, honeymoon period, flirtation with success then some poor results, press and fans get on the manager’s back, they get sacked and round and round we go.
The assertion that “if we’d had so and so manager then we’d have…”
It’s all speculative and impossible to prove or disprove so almost pointless discussing.
World Cup semi-final then Euros final then World Cup Quarters (lost to eventual finalists) and then at worst the Euro semi-final. It’s the best run in my lifetime. Which doesn’t mean I think Southgate hasn’t made mistakes. But I don’t buy we’d have been sweeping all before us under a different manager
Oh I'm not saying I don't think Southgate's done a good job, he is literally (by results) the best manager we've had since 1966.
He's had a great run of tournaments as you say, and vital to that has been building a sense of camaraderie in the team which by all accounts massively held us back in the big 4 era, as well as getting the penalty hoodoo off our backs.
It's just that he did that with way worse squads than we have access to now, especially in 2018. Then, we were coming back off some truly abysmal results and dire expectations, which it turns out was the kind of environment he thrives in: making relatively mediocre players into something greater than the sum of their parts.
Now we have some of the best talent in the world in almost all of our attacking positions. We don't need somebody to make them better than they already are, we need someone to put them together in such a way that they express the best of themselves.
Southgate has proven in this tournament that he's not the man to do that. He's taken us as far as he can, which – and I cannot state this enough – is a fucking long way.
So as a great man once said: thanks for the memories, but it's time to say goodbye.
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
Rice and Saka saved his sorry, incompetent arse. Sounds biased. Arsenal players, right? But still true. Watch the goal. There's NO way Rice was following used car saleseman Southgate's plan when he ran ahead of Saka and opened up the space inside. Southgate's abuse of Rice has been horrendous. Literally he's sent him out to NOT play, but to STOP the opposition playing. And that's a sure sign of a loser. If Soutgate somehow continues to fluke these results and wins something, it will be his players (minus Kane of course) who have covered for the fact the man knows nothing and has 2 fewer balls than required.
Für eure Sicherheit
Id go further and say those two have been the best players for England in this tournament (low bar to get over I know)
Largely agree with Wmug, Southgate has had some merits in the past including for me, though I know others don't like it, his stances on moral issues at times. However the better our players have got the more he's fallen short and he's without doubt become hostage to some of them while ignoring others
The treatment of White was a disgrace, he should have sacked that Johnny Vegas lookalike assistant years ago
I don't agree with Letters' fatalistic view of England, they could well pub this tournament but the point is they'd be odds-on favourites under a manager who did the job properly
If they get someone with a winning mentality and the strength not to kowtow to the big players then England would have a killer squad
Last edited by Mac76; 08-07-2024 at 08:17 AM.
Yes, also Watkins has been one of our best players, simply by showing how impotent we are up front without the striker who can think, run and keep their weight down
I don’t think it’s unfair to say Southgate has been lucky, the record is the record and making three semi finals in four tournament surpasses almost every other England manager in terms of consistency….but we have had the draw open up for us. The only time we’ve come up against a big team before the semis was France in 2022 and we lost. Germany arguably a big team we got past but really this was a German side in the doldrums.
Against both Croatia in the 2018 World Cup semi final (perhaps understandably as we have very little in the way of quality in midfield) and the final against Italy we took the lead and then just withdrew into our shells. A little bit more ambition and preparedness to take risk and we would have won Euro 2020.
That over cautious approach won’t change under Southgate, and in this tournament it’s not just been a case of being over cautious it’s a side that looks confused, doesn’t trust each other and seems so frightened of making mistakes that it ironically makes more of them.
I’ve watched Kane a lot for Bayern this season, he will drop deep for them to try and win the ball but when players behind him win the ball he makes runs into the box and has managed plenty of goals for Bayern. Opponents playing a deep block seem to make him more reticent, I don’t know what’s in that apology of a brain of his, he seems to think as captain he needs to get involved in every area of the pitch barring the area we need him in.
The two goals he has scored shows he’s perfectly capable of making well timed movement, I wouldn’t rule out that Southgate is getting him to play much deeper. Watkins as a player of pace is good at running off the shoulder of the last defender, but frankly haven’t seen a team push up enough or indeed England get the ball up the pitch quickly enough for him to profit off it. He cut a pretty frustrated figure when he came on against Denmark
As for being overweight? I think Walker is far more guilty of that
I’d consider playing Watkins and Toney against Netherlands, possible Kane injured himself against Switzerland and if we have someone to hold up the ball, could frighten Dutch with pace
Also Konsa should start he was excellent against Switzerland. If we must have Guehi back in the team, I’d drop Walker and play Konsa, Stones and Guehi as back three, Saka on the right and Shaw on the left
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