World Cup 2018 | 3rd July | R16: Colombia vs England Match Thread, KO 19:00 (BST)

[ONTHERUNWITHTHAKSIN]

Henderson was supposed to bring experience and a level head to this young team and he his the one who let the Columbians under his skin.

 

[SpiritofBurnden]

To the best of my knowledge he has had 1 chance in the whole tournament. A header that was saved but that Stones scored from, so hardly a disaster. Look at Kane. How many opportunities has he had to score really. He has scored 3 penalties, had a crazy deflection that he knew nothing about, a header from a corner and a tap in from a corner. I can't remember him missing any real chances other than that. Well, Sterling doesn't take the penalties, hasn't had the fortune to have the ball hit against his heel and deflect in and isn't going to win too many headers at corners. If the midfield create some chances for him and he messes them up, then have a go at him for that but when he has been given next to no real goal scoring opportunities, I don't really know what you expect his end product to be. Play him out wide in his natural position (and/or with players that can play the passes he thrives on) and I think you'll see what a good player he is but in this formation, with the lack of creativity that England have, I think he's doing about as well as can be expected.

You don't get many goal-scoring chances in international football in general, that particular problem is not unique to England.

He's not going to be played out wide because that's not the system that Southgate wants to play.

He has to adapt his game otherwise he's going to become the next John Barnes, brilliant for his club but not for his country.

 

[inchy14]

Non City Fan and bit of a lurker here because, well its BM and its funny as fuck.

Just read the last 20 or so pages and thought it would be interesting to add my 2 pence as a non city fan.

• Stones was great last night, and has been from the start of the WC, but Maguire has been equally good and as a more "unknown quantity" is bound to get more attention than Stones. You lot moaning about Stones not getting the praise he deserves is fucking nonsense, almost everything i have heard / read has been positive.

• Sterling has been bang average at best in the WC. Got to applaud his attitude, he has shown up and looked for the ball at every chance and never hidden, fair play to the lad.... but his end product has been rank, 3 - 4 times yesterday he ran up a blind alley, mis-controlled the ball on multiple occasions, it was hugely frustrating to watch. Having said that, we were worse as a team when he went off and i do take the point that maybe sometimes he is too quick some of his team mates. Its a quandry. I would genuinely think of dropping him for Rashford for Sweden.

• I think Kyle Walker has been brilliant at CB in a three, no chance he could do it in a two mind but playing in a three allows him to have that "brain fart" that someone mentioned earlier without it definitely getting punished.

• The Colombians were absolute ****s. Couldn't be happier to see them cry at the end, dirty shit house ****s, deserved to lose.

• I like the system that we are playing and more importantly the players seem to understand it and can work with it, i think those suggesting a change of system are maybe a bit naive in thinking that switching it up for the next game is really simple.

• Delighted for Pickford for both his last minute save and his penno save.

• Harry Kane was awesome again last night, anyone digging him out needs to check themselves, he got tired toward the end, but he won the ball, held up play well and closed down all night. Dropped deep to affect play, he is a proper number 9, probably the best traditional Centre Forward in the world and people should recognise that.

• Agree that Delle, Lingard and Hendo lost control of the game for periods last night, but given Delph's pretty average performance against Belgium, i'm not sure he is the answer, i would maybe play Loftus Cheek instead of Delle for Sweden.

• Dier is awful in open play but fair fucks he had the stones to take the last pen.

• Finally, the "anti City bias" hand wringing on here gets pretty tiresome, its not just you you know, its everyone that isn't the Rags or Dippers, but some of you seem to take pleasure in it and go looking for it. I'm a Reading fan for fucks sake, i would love for our team to be 'ignored' as much as you lot are.

Why would you drop him after you yourself have just said we were worse when he went off? Until England find a really creative midfielder all our forwards including Kane will struggle in open play as no chances are being created, Rashford can't do what Sterling does and i doubt he'd be asked to. Sterling is doing a decent job in an unfamiliar role and thankfully Southgate can see it.

 

[aguero93:20]

I hate it too when you mean to write twat and it auto corrects to test.

Kinda fucks up the whole cube, I mean vive. No vibe, Vibe. :)

The autocorrect on my phone constantly corrects '****s' to 'Congress' which is always good for a Google, I mean giggle.

 

[Magicpole]

The autocorrect on my phone constantly corrects '****s' to 'Congress' which is always good for a Google, I mean giggle.

If I ever refer to you as a cube you know what happened.

 

[Southbanken]

Interestingly i think we do agree on a large part in that Sterling, because is not being played in his natural position and because of that he has been pretty ineffective, doing "bang average" and "doing about as well as can be expected" are not that far apart.

In terms of end product, i didn't mean purely goals. I mean positive impacts on the game when he has the ball at his feet. A few times last night he turned his man or was found by a pass leaving him facing goal only for him to run into a tackle and lose the ball. Like i said, i really applaud his attitude, he kept showing for the ball and never hid but too often for me when he did get the ball he was ineffective. He's not the only one, Delle was pretty anonymous and Lingard not much better last night, but Sterling has been like that in all of his 3 games so far.

I can't agree with that I'm afraid.

Sterling is a winger being asked to play as a forward. His main strength is running onto balls and running at players, not playing with his back to the goal in a central position with payers twice the size of him on his back the whole game. The problem is that England aren't playing to his strengths. They don't have any players in midfield who are capable of playing through balls for him to run onto.

During the tournament he has made countless runs into good positions that either haven't been seen or the player with the ball hasn't been able to make the pass. He has also on numerous occasions pulled the defenders out of position to give midfield players (usually Lingard) the space to run into and get a few chances.

You mention that his end product has been rank but I don't get what end product you are talking about. To the best of my knowledge he has had 1 chance in the whole tournament. A header that was saved but that Stones scored from, so hardly a disaster. Look at Kane. How many opportunities has he had to score really. He has scored 3 penalties, had a crazy deflection that he knew nothing about, a header from a corner and a tap in from a corner. I can't remember him missing any real chances other than that. Well, Sterling doesn't take the penalties, hasn't had the fortune to have the ball hit against his heel and deflect in and isn't going to win too many headers at corners. If the midfield create some chances for him and he messes them up, then have a go at him for that but when he has been given next to no real goal scoring opportunities, I don't really know what you expect his end product to be.

Play him out wide in his natural position (and/or with players that can play the passes he thrives on) and I think you'll see what a good player he is but in this formation, with the lack of creativity that England have, I think he's doing about as well as can be expected.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1...national-FIFA-World-Cup-2018-Colombia-England

 

[Southbanken]

Why would you drop him after you yourself have just said we were worse when he went off? Until England find a really creative midfielder all our forwards including Kane will struggle in open play as no chances are being created, Rashford can't do what Sterling does and i doubt he'd be asked to. Sterling is doing a decent job in an unfamiliar role and thankfully Southgate can see it.

Just because we were worse after he went off doesn't mean that that was the reason, cause does not equal effect and all that.

Against Sweden i think our best chance is to try and blow them away in the first thirty minutes (seems to be our main tactic so lets run with it). I would "genuinely think of dropping him" because in the final third he has been ineffective so far. I think it might be worth giving Rashford a start to see if he can do any better in the final third and to do so, we would have to drop one of Kane or Sterling, not sure even City fans would advocate dropping Kane.

 

[Southbanken]

I think part of the reason people get hung up on Sterling is they don't understand his role. He's not being asked to play as a striker, the reason he's correctly a dead cert to start games is Southgate realises the complete lack of creativity from elsewhere. Sterling and Kane are the only players in the squad who can hold and use the ball well in the 10 position it's an obvious waste of Kane's finishing for him to do that so Sterling will play and when he doesn't England will 'mysteriously' look much worse without him. It happened yesterday until Kane started dropping off in the second half of extra time.

Rashford and Vardy can't fulfill the same role, if we had a midfielder who could use the ball well you could play one of them, we don't so you can't, or at least shouldn't.

I can definitely see what you are getting at here, and Sterling has played that 10 role well to a point, in that he has shown up and held the ball well, turned his man well a few times but he hasn't used the ball well. You say there is a lack of creativity from elsewhere but i genuinely haven't seen much in the way of effective creativity from Sterling. He has made a few exciting runs but has generally lost the ball at the end, not managed to get a shot or a cross in as a result.

 

[hammersmithlad]

We had that until Vardy came on.

At the time I thought getting Vardy on would relieve the increasing amount of pressure we were coming under from the Columbians which made sense to me.

However, Vardy was poor & seemed to have his own game plan out of sync with the team and especially Kane. He also seemed to be off the pace a bit compared to the ninja deer in headlights agility I've witnessed him when playing for the Foxes.

I agree with most when Sterling came off, we lost our link up play in regards to attacking Columbia & there was no else who seemed capable of creating anything else useful towards the end of the game.