We've been here before.The other thing is that if he starts Foden now, it looks like he’s buckled to public pressure, and if Phil doesn’t play a 9/10, Waistcoat looks like he may have been right all along!
We don't need to win though.We've been here before.
Mexico 86 - had to win the 3rd game after 2 shite performances. Bobby Robson in charge but the players allegedly had a bit of a rebellion and things were said / changed. Lineker got a hatrick and England progressed......
Southgate believes that Foden will not give him the control that England needs in the midfield and due to that aspect hasn't been able to play centrally for city and therefore does not consider him an option centrally as well for England.The sad part is that Pep develops players to play ANYWHERE in his system, yet Southgate appears to have picked pigeons for holes, not realizing that Foden can play any one of 5 attacking positions (4 in Southgate’s 4-2-3-1 set up).
The game was crying out for Grealish, Foden & Rashford to replace the 3 AMs and play at pace, attacking a tiring USA team with significantly less depth on their bench.
Additionally, he needed the FBs to get the ball into the channels much quicker instead of relying on the outside AMs (Sterling & Saka, then Greslish and Rashford) to hold onto the ball and wait for the overlap.
With Spurs, Kane does a great job of dropping in deep to pick up the ball, lay it off to a midfielder, and them slot it into the channels for Son or Kulashevski (sp?) or Moura to run onto.
In the England set up, we are so conservative that not only do we not have the players making that run into the channels, but we don’t have the talent in midfield to find that pass even if it is on.
Against Wales, it would be criminal not to play an established 4-3-3, with speed on the flanks and Bellingham and Foden either side of Rice/Henderson/Phillips.
Not only would it give us an attacking 5, but with the DM slotting back between the CBs, thus freeing up the FBs to get down the line or into a more inverted midfield role, it could give us a smothering attacking 7 that doesn’t let them out of their own half!
Of course, it’ll be 4-2-3-1 with a slight shuffle of personnel, at most, because a loss to a poor Wales team would be a complete embarrassment! Also, expect their back up keeper to have a blinder!!
Yeah I meant from the style of play rather than results. It needs the players to tell Southgate to loosen the shacklesWe don't need to win though.
Win and we top the group.
Draw and we qualify, and we will still win the group unless Iran beat the USA or USA win by more than four.
Lose and we will still qualify unless Wales beat us by more than three. We could even lose and top the group if it's by less than three and Iran and USA draw.
England’s “possession” stats are “Stones - Maguire - Stones - Maguire - Stones” numbers and have, as clearly seen in the USA game, NOTHING to do with maintaining possession further up the field and creating chances.Southgate believes that Foden will not give him the control that England needs in the midfield and due to that aspect hasn't been able to play centrally for city and therefore does not consider him an option centrally as well for England.
I don't disagree in the sense that picking Foden won't help with control of matches and will introduce some risk into the game but at this point, I think Southgate needs to weigh up the positives and negatives of Phil being in the starting XI and will find out that there should be far more positives than negatives, particularly in the chance creation department which England is lacking in right now.