good to know who you can slag off indiscriminately as they have you muted.
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Definitely a degree of truth in this. Don’t think anyone genuinely believes it would be a great achievement if England do win today.
The thing is I’d apply the same sort of argument about today’s game to Switzerland and any of the potential semi opponents. Not to the same extremes but ultimately the same logic.
Yes, England might come up against well-coached, organised teams but these aren’t ethereal concepts that I don’t know why people wouldn’t be asking of Southgate / this collection of players.
If England get eliminated by a ‘good’ Switzerland - who ultimately have considerably inferior players barring one or two positions - then I don’t understand why the key question wouldn’t be why England can’t be like that, rather than some vague waffle about narrow margins in tournament football and there being no such thing as ‘easy games’
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England obviously ought to be favourites against any team in this side of the draw. Think the problem is when you describe the sort of upset that literally happens at every major tournament as the most embarrassing pathetic failure that anyone has ever seen or whatever the wording was, people are going to respond to that
Lads, it’s Slovakia.
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You under estimate England’s next opponents at your peril imo
I think you’d run into exactly the same issues about what constitutes ‘advantage’ etc. You’re always going to have marginal calls in football even without VAR, but bringing VAR in has magnified those to an absurd degree. The issue with VAR is that it comes in with a promise of ‘objectivity’ but it either a) ruins the game as we saw last night or b) just adds another layer of subjectivity in super slo-mo.
The horse has bolted re: VAR, but surely FIFA at some point will have to look at the handball rule because it’s absurd. tbh I’m less concerned about the offside rule because you’re always going to have to (literally) draw the line somewhere and people are always going to complain about it.
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i agree with all that tbf
agree with aggpass that the swiss are within a margin of quality that in a one off game they could beat an england side who play decently well, but if the teams played to the talent level available we should be beating everyone through to the final, and its a failure of management if they dont.
it probably is harder for a team with a lot of stars to gel in the way austria have, but its not a good excuse.
this is Southgate’s supposed unique attribute as a manager, though.
shoulda binned him years ago, but because he acts and looks like a beleaguered line manager who’s fundamentally a top bloke and gets on with the team, the fact he seems to know nothing about football, and even having one of your top players refuse to play for the team, gets a pass from the press.
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Yeah feel like Palmer and Foden starting is a good idea because then you could bring Gordon and Saka on to run at a tired defends, but then England won’t tire the defence and you probably want Palmer there for penalties.
Dunno.
Mourinho was available, Tuchel was available, even Potter was available.
I was available.
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Good team, Slovakia
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Saka (since the last euros) has been good at pens too. Guess one and only one of the two of them will always be on the pitch and whichever one is will be one of our takers, so doesn’t matter too much who starts
i think he’s rubbish mush, idk what to say
with that i meant tactically - obviously to a degree it takes man management as well - getting people to work in roles where they arent the star, but i dont think hes a tactics guy in the first place, so any man management skills he’s got arent being used in that way.
the things he gets credit for are outside of the pitch - there has definitely been a less toxic atmosphere around the squad in the last few years, and thats not nothing, but it should only be a starting point and hes not good enough to build off it.
ALARM
I have just been informed by my colleagues in the UEFA office that there will be an additional two day FIXTURELESS break next week on Wednesday AND Thursday.
God save our souls.
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Your football threaders were so preoccupied with whether or not England could beat Slovakia, they didn’t stop to think if they should
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doesn’t really matter does it, none of us have any control over it. we’re just here to enjoy the football. remembers England vs Denmark
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Wonder how much of this has been down to Man City being completely dominant domestically and there not being any real rivalry between the bigger clubs the players come from.
Think there’s also the squad being way more spread out across the league as well. Was talking about it last night and in that Golden Generation era where they didn’t get on there were big chunks of players from Liverpool, United and Chelsea. Don’t have that to anywhere near the same degree now.
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Think the rivalry between City and Liverpool especially has been huge. Just think the majority of England players aren’t as colossal a set of bellends as they were 15-20 years ago.
Probably as much/more to do with the academies trying to teach them how to be decent humans than Southgate in particular though
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Rooney aside the best players were just absolute cunts. Terry, Rio, Cole, Lampard, Gerrard, Owen. Imagine spending time with any of them. Scholes was just incredibly dull until the feet thing came out
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