I'm going to sound like just another City fan praising our lads and criticising everyone else but that's not how I mean to sound... I thought we were comfortably on top in the first half. The key for me was that Raheem used his pace to make Lovren's life a misery. This meant Modric and Rakitic tended to drop deeper than they wished and the link between them and the Croatia attack simply didn't exist. Our midfield was at least energetic and Young and Trippier could push up at will. After our goal we were full of confidence and , had Harry Kane rolled the ball to Raheem, we would have led 2-0 and all may have been different.
The second half was completely different and showed up the limitations of this England team at this level. Croatia were much more positive from the start and showed real ability to get the ball and keep it. At the same time our midfield had real difficulty in getting the ball and found it even more difficult to keep it. Henderson is simply not good enough to take on Modric and Rakitic and both Lingard and Delle really struggled, largely because Trippier and Young were now being driven back. Trippier was, it seems, fighting a losing battle with injury: Young gets by against the quality of opposition we faced when he can go forward but he really struggles when forced to defend. Croatia ran the midfield and were always able to progress down the flanks. Raheem got no service at all apart from hopeful long balls which he could have done nothing with even if he could have controlled them and Harry Kane moved back into midfield more and more. We were not only toothless but almost nonexistent up front.
Now we saw Southgate's deficiencies as coach. To my mind it was midfield which needed "repair" so that Kane could get back up front and Sterling would again have the ball to put ptessure on their central defence. But Southgate seemed to think Raheem was the problem and thus made what he thought was a "like for like" substitution with only 15 minutes left. Rashford cut an isolated and frustrated figure who had no effect on the game at all. Replacing Young with Rose was a change which needed making but was left far, far too late. Dier replaced Henderson when we probably needed both earlier and could have used Delph, especially as Trippier was completely spent/injured. Vardy for Walker was the heroic/desperate substitution managers tend to make, but was of no practical benefit because it was too late and we had already decided to put our faith in hoofball by then.
Quoting this for nail being hit on head.