England v Andorra | World Cup Qualifier

[Alan Harper's Tash]

fair enough - just feel after the success of the Euros it’s a special time for England and the youngsters coming through, there’s a lot of spirit and unity from this side that I don’t think I’ve seen in my life time

Whereas I see a lot of potential with a manager that still has the handbrake on.

 

[supercity88]

Whereas I see a lot of potential with a manager that still has the handbrake on.

That's how I see it. Sosuthgate deserves huge credit for the unity he has created and for blooding young players. Many better managers before him have failed to do both and just played the big names without creating a cohesive team.

However, he showed against Italy in the final that he will always be too cautious. We were 1-0 up early on and had a bench full of players that could have looked to counter their experienced but old back line. Instead we dropped deeper and deeper and fell into a rut. Their goal was coming for ages. Even at 1-1 there was no ambition to win the game. And when he wanted to make his subs for the shootout he waited and waited and waited because he feared bringing those players on earlier could have lost us the game.

A home final, with a home crowd at Wembley and we should have been playing with more intent and freedom. Against the big sides, Southgate will always fear what they can do rather than allow us to do what we can unfortunately. But he's still doing better with this team than any previous manager since Ramsay has so can we really complain too much. Top of the group, 5 wins from 5. About all you can ask for really. To win the world cup, I think we need Bellingham to really establish over the next year or so in order to have a Rice/Philipps and Bellingham central midfield rather than the two former players. It would give us a lot more drive in the middle.

 

[BlueHammer85]

That's how I see it. Sosuthgate deserves huge credit for the unity he has created and for blooding young players. Many better managers before him have failed to do both and just played the big names without creating a cohesive team.

However, he showed against Italy in the final that he will always be too cautious. We were 1-0 up early on and had a bench full of players that could have looked to counter their experienced but old back line. Instead we dropped deeper and deeper and fell into a rut. Their goal was coming for ages. Even at 1-1 there was no ambition to win the game. And when he wanted to make his subs for the shootout he waited and waited and waited because he feared bringing those players on earlier could have lost us the game.

A home final, with a home crowd at Wembley and we should have been playing with more intent and freedom. Against the big sides, Southgate will always fear what they can do rather than allow us to do what we can unfortunately. But he's still doing better with this team than any previous manager since Ramsay has so can we really complain too much. Top of the group, 5 wins from 5. About all you can ask for really. To win the world cup, I think we need Bellingham to really establish over the next year or so in order to have a Rice/Philipps and Bellingham central midfield rather than the two former players. It would give us a lot more drive in the middle.

Pretty fair and balanced that, worth noting though in a final - every manager is cautious especially against a Italian side that hold the world record of 36 games unbeaten

if we won the penalty's, no one would have been questioning our set up

 

[Phil1]

Pretty fair and balanced that, worth noting though in a final - every manager is cautious especially against a Italian side that hold the world record of 36 games unbeaten

if we won the penalty's, no one would have been questioning our set up

But you didn't win the penalty shoot out and thankfully there are people who aren't being fooled into believing Southgate is the man and asking questions.
England are in a pretty good place right now with the very real potential of winning a major tournament.
You won't though. Not whilst giving a basic manager with few ideas the job of seeing it through.
Hes a decent bloke, I quite like him as a man actually, but he's not a great or even good manager. He's somebody who's found himself with a genuinely talented group of players but hasn't got the ability to unlock the potential and push you on.
If being there or thereabouts makes you happy then fair dos, just don't try and fool others into thinking that's good enough because the right coach could do so much more.

 

[KS55]

Yawn.

 

[BlueHammer85]

But you didn't win the penalty shoot out and thankfully there are people who aren't being fooled into believing Southgate is the man and asking questions.
England are in a pretty good place right now with the very real potential of winning a major tournament.
You won't though. Not whilst giving a basic manager with few ideas the job of seeing it through.
Hes a decent bloke, I quite like him as a man actually, but he's not a great or even good manager. He's somebody who's found himself with a genuinely talented group of players but hasn't got the ability to unlock the potential and push you on.
If being there or thereabouts makes you happy then fair dos, just don't try and fool others into thinking that's good enough because the right coach could do so much more.

aside from the 'being too cautious' argument - i fail to see why you wouldn't give Southgate more credit.
Look at how many young kids he has given a chance too
Look at how many players on form in the PL he gives a chance too
The unity, the spirit, the work rate is coming from somewhere - and he is the man at the helm -
even refusing to back down to the boo boys on the Knee was a shrewd move as it made the players even more united.

pretty much every England game i watch, we completely dominate and score for fun. International level that's just not that easy, Germany and Spain drew with Hungary a couple months in the Euros.

for a England side to reach a WC semi and a Euros final, that is a incredible achievement given there are hundreds of country's that can only dream of that.

We genuinely have a chance of winning the next world cup under Southgate and this squad of players - football is football and there is zero guarantees but if we can't be optimistic now, then we never will be.

 

[Octavian]

Pretty fair and balanced that, worth noting though in a final - every manager is cautious especially against a Italian side that hold the world record of 36 games unbeaten

if we won the penalty's, no one would have been questioning our set up

Yep, not just being cautious but managers get it wrong in finals all the time. Look at Pep in our CL final.

Picks a team we’ve never played before and drops an in form Fernandinho who had been a key reason we got to the final.

Southgate will hopefully learn from it.

 

[supercity88]

Pretty fair and balanced that, worth noting though in a final - every manager is cautious especially against a Italian side that hold the world record of 36 games unbeaten

if we won the penalty's, no one would have been questioning our set up

No of course not, that's the nature of football. But we didn't and so you have to question the approach/mentality in the game. Going 1-0 up was ideal. But we just sat deeper and deeper and let them dictate the game. Their goal was coming for about 50 minutes! We could all see how poorly we were playing. We couldn't get out.

Southgate should have changed shape and removed Mount who was ineffective so we had more runners in behind and forced Italy to drop a bit or at least be wary of over committing. It turned into a bit of a training game before their goal. Defence v attack.

Like I said though, we made the final and played some good football on the way to it. For a lot of our players it was their first time in a major final and in the centre of the park we couldn't compete. That remains the area you look at in comparison to rival teams and still see an issue. Rice and Phillips are good players, but they don't offer enough as a combination going forwards and that was a huge issue in the final. If we had someone with a bit more composure to find a team mate and keep offering for the ball we might have won the game. Instead we never kept it for more than a few passes. Pass completion was down at 74% and we had 34% of the ball. We'd have been better playing balls over the top into space that what we did attempt. If Sterling/Saka were playing to run in behind then the Italian defence would have struggled. Their CBs aren't catching either and their full backs would have had to drop deeper.

All well and good in hindsight. We could do with some friendlies against the likes of Belgium/France/Italy before the World Cup to hone our skills. Plenty of reason to be optimistic though with the number of good young players we have. Another striker kicking on would help. We can't keep relying on Kane to play every game and often 90 minutes of it!

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

Whereas I see a lot of potential with a manager that still has the handbrake on.

I think both points are true. Southgate has done a great job improving morale and building team spirit. In many ways he has transformed the culture of the England team. But I agree that he is still over-cautious against better opponents. I think this team could have won the last World Cup and the Euros if he had been prepared to take more risks in the crucial games.