Denmark v England - Thu 20th June, 17:00 | Euro 2024 Group C

[ShaunMCFC]

As Bluehammer is feeling it today I will have a go.

Yes dropping back is totally on Southgate. Do you honestly believe Pep would allow City to do that? He would be screaming at them from the sidelines. Southgate yet again stood there like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights.

Foden should play no 10, Bellingham should drop back along Rice. However, his natural game would see him joining the attack. Southsafe does not rate Phil, we know this from past tournaments. FFS he even preferred Mount to Phil.

Palmer is another no 10. I would play Phil first and then perhaps bring him on for the last 20 mins.

Rice could play the 6 on his own, however Southsafe wants two DM's.

Phillips was just a workhorse. He is now a fat lazy workhorse who cannot trap a bag of cement.

Kane should be dropped. Southgate allows him free reign.

Yep, if I was to answer my own questions my answers would be very similar to your opinion.

I wanted to confirm it from a none blue, just to allay my fears that I’m a biased **** more than anything! Nice one for the reply pal

 

[SebastianBlue]

They are almost always absolutely spot on. Crazy accuracy for satire.

They did the “Spurs fans feel something strange… happiness” video when Tottenham were riding high, with the video ending with one of the fans saying “Ange is going to rid us of Spursy” and the guy in this England skit looks at him and says “don’t take the piss, he’s big Ange, not Jesus fucking Christ”.

And Spurs almost immediately went on the nose dive.

Prophetic.

 

[red 2 hats]

Amazed Arteta hasn’t fixed this with him yet. That and hiding behind players.

He's shite, and some absolute idiots think he's better than Rodri.

 

[SWP's back]

Foden Saka,Kane, Bellingham, some of the best players in the world who have had very good seasons yet Southgate sets us up like we are Scotland it’s no surprise many of them are struggling View attachment 123020

Fucking pathetic.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Southgate should have gone after that disaster against Hungary in the Nations League. He lost his drive for the job, thought about quitting and we should have taken the opportunity to part ways.

There was a lot of joy and positivity around England in the past few tournaments. Lot's of "it's coming home" which was largely in jest but with a slight air of hope around it.

I feel like the whole nation is completely bored and sapped now. People in the media have talked about there being an expectation to win it, but I haven't spoken to anyone who believes we're going to win it.

There's only one thing left to say really...

"it's fucking coming home!"

Generally agree with this but would add that Southgate has meekly allowed Bellingham to take over the national team in a way similar to Messi, but with far, far less talent and ability to mitigate the downsides of such control.

Southgate is too frightened of the backlash of forcing Bellingham to play the role he actually excels in, dropping his best mate for an actual midfielder, and allowing his main rival for England’s golden boy status to play in his best position.

Bellingham has sucked the air out of the room and as long as he imposes this position of being more important than the team, England are not going to win anything.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

He's shite, and some absolute idiots think he's better than Rodri.

He’s not shite. Pep wanted him in our midfield. He doesn’t play the same position as Rodri

 

[red 2 hats]

He’s not shite. Pep wanted him in our midfield. He doesn’t play the same position as Rodri

Rodri can play the defensive midfield position on his own, Rice can't, he needs someone to hold his hand coz he hasn't got the capability to go it alone, he's missing Kalvin Phillips ffs who incidentily is a player Pep wanted and that turned out well.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Amazed Arteta hasn’t fixed this with him yet. That and hiding behind players.

What I think is most telling having watched him closely, as that is the position I played and so is the one I most understand and can probably analyse best, is that half the time he passed sideways he immediately put up his arm to direct the receiving player to pass it forward to a player he could have passed to himself.

He simply did not want the responsibility of potentially giving away the ball and wanted to push it off on someone else and then moan when they didn’t have the angle to make the pass. That is not the mentality of an elite international player. It is of someone who is afraid to fail so tries to avoid taking any risks.

And someone on Wednesday was trying to argue that Rice was a progressive passer now, and that Southgate had not setup the side to be ultra conservative.

 

[supercity88]

Gary Lineker's analysis is great here.



And some of what they're saying is pretty worrying, because no amount of changing players is going to improve things if the person in charge can't get the tactics right.

It's a shame Lineker didn't have more involvement in the FA post-playing career. He'd played abroad, seen culturally the different approaches to the game and recognised the issues we had in England. I've heard him say how he tried to push through a change to youth coaching so kids didn't play on full size pitches, as we probably all did. That didn't happen abroad and funnily enough they then learnt how to control the ball in tight spaces rather than get lumps at the back hoofing it to quick players up top.

 

[bonespost]