Who cares as long as England play and do well? Which Southgate has done for years now.
EC final , WC semi final , very rarely lose. He’s built and quality foundation and spirit with young lads.
We have a better squad (depth and consistently of the standard of players) than I’ve seen in my life. We have far more depth than when we had the so-called ‘Golden Generation’. This current crop is the most technically proficient and skilful set of players ever produced in this country and we have a manager who doesn’t know how to coach that standard of players.
Okay, we are not Brazil of 2002, but there are no teams of that quality in world football anymore. Apart from France and Argentina, we are there, around third best group of players on the planet for me.
While we aren’t 2002 Brazil, this list of names is better than Brazil (or Spain or Germany) have at present: Kane Foden Grealish Sterling Saka Maddison Rice Bellingham Eze Bowen Gordon Ward-Prowse Wilson Nketiah Rashford and that bloody idiot Toney (still a cracking player, when he’s allowed to play again)…
Yet Southgate’s tactics and team selection inhibits the quity at his disposal and inhibits our success.
It was Southgate’s tactics that saw us very nearly go out against Denmark in the Euros semi before even reaching the final, we got through despite Southgate that night. It was Southgate’s tactics that saw us relinquish a 1-0 lead at home against an inferior Italy team in the Euros final and it went to penalties (where he brought on two penalty takers on the final whistle who went up to take the penalties cold).
Similar to the Euros final, in the WC semi against Croatia, we went 1-0 up barely attacked again with any purpose to make it 2-0 all game. In both games we played like relegation fodder trying to hold on to a one goal lead we’d luckily nicked and had no quality to go on from there.
In last year’s WC he chopped and changed the midfield from game-to-game, always with the problem of whichever three were playing, they were too far away from each other considering the lack of pace in those selected and were too easy to dispossess and too easy to play through once we were dispossessed. If a team lacks pace, you have to condense the midfield area but he had us wide open.
We were relegated from a Nations League group that included the worst Germany and Italy teams of all-time, and Hungary.
If Moyes said he was retiring at the end of the season, would you want Southgate to take over at West Ham?