Genuine (theoretical!) question

If Barnsley had played Russia last night, would we have failed to beat them? Slow, lumbering, extremely vulnerable to pace down the flanks, absolutely clueless going forward. Not beyond the realms we could have got a result.

 

3-0 to us, I reckon.

 

I was watching the set pieces and I thought, Hourihane takes better corners and free kicks than those. And some of the finishing in the first half I thought, would I back Winnall and Fletcher to have scored those, and I would, definitely. And I thought about Hammill cutting inside and running at those big lumbering centre halves and I thought, we'd have ****ing destroyed these.

 

In my less than sober state last night, in my head I replaced Sterling with Hammill, Smalling with Mawson, Kane with Fletcher (though whether Fletcher would have done any better on corner duty is debatable), and Hart with Davies, as his distribution was poor. I also brought on Isgrove late on to use as an outlet. We won 3-0.

 

Isgrove is Welsh. As direct result of that, Russia would have been awarded the game 3-0.

 

Unless the Russians were in disguise as Colchesterski in which case the result is about right.

 

To be fair though, one of Russia's players is an ethnic German who was born in Ukraine, and who has even played for Germany at international level. He was mysteriously given a Russian passport a few weeks ago.

 

I'm just pointing out whose fault it was we didn't win.

 

Not sure who it was but an England player cut in from the left and tried to curl it in the far corner from 25 yards and it just went straight, high and wide and I thought, Hammill would have put that in.

 

I'd imagine any professional team that plays with eachother week in week out would have a good chance against an international team that plays once every few month

 

Kane

 

Funny that! I watched the whole of the Sky Barnsley Millwall match coverage again on Friday. Last night I watched England toil against Russia with poor finishing and genuinely felt that if the Barnsley line up from the play off final had been playing they would have beaten Russia comfortably. I even said to my wife in the turgid 2nd half that I thought "Barnsley could beat this lot". For me Hecky would have been the decisive factor with his tactical nous.

Woy still picks his side on individuals names and reputation rather than putting a team together. And yes I would have backed our strikers against what England put out yesterday.

Then again, I know f*ck all about football 'cos I didn't get all the praise about Rooney running the show. Saw a lot of short sideways and backward passes from him and don't recall many defence splitting passes like I saw Stones make a couple of games back but I suppose they all add to the 'impressive completed pass stats they gave out with his MOTM rating. Thought Davies looks more solid than Joe Hart too nowadays. At least Davies can keep the ball in play, and occasionally find one of his own players when he kicks the ball downfield.

Roll on the start of the proper footy season COYR!

 

Not sure about that myself. In terms of strikers we only played well and though I love ours I have to admit Harry Kane is better...

 

Fair point although why is Kane taking corners. He has height and pace so why is he not in the box frightening defenders when we ge crnersand set pieces.

 

Great player, used very ineffectively last night. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Fletcher or Winnall would also look pretty ineffective on corner duty. I still maintain that Hammill would have been more effective than Sterling last night!

 

To be fair the 2016 version of Julian Broddle would have been better than Sterling. He was beyond bad. Kane needs to ignore instructions and do what he does at Tottenham. Surely one if the other players can take a ******* corner.

 

Let's hope this team you think would beat Russia 3-0 can win 15 matches in the Championship next season.

 

Overall, the Championship is a much tougher league than the Russian Premier League, where most of the Russian team play. With the exception of CSKA, Zenit, Spartak and Lokomotiv (and surprise package this season Rostov), the rest of the league would struggle badly in our second tier.

 

That's a very good point mate - South Korea in 2002 talent-wise were probably around the level of a good Championship side. Yet they trained together for several months before the tournament, and it showed. Incredibly coherent and organised, and as a result much greater than the sum of their parts.

 

I agree with your point but they also got to the semi's due to some of the worst (& probably corrupt) officiating ever seen