Nothing knee jerk here. I was disgusted by the performance against Croatia in 2018 and nothing he's done has changed my opinion. You can not hand the initiative to international teams and expect to get away with it. The Euro final was the worst example. For 20 minutes Italy were reeling then we sat deep and gave them the freedom of Wembley for an hour. Italy! How does anybody think weregoing to get away with that? Then, magically, after they equalise we're suddenly picking up the tempo and causing them problems again. Despite what some may say I don't think we expect to win every tournament but we certainly have the players that should make us contenders and we generally are. But lack of ambition and confidence repeatedly catch us out. I read a stat the other day that the last 20 games against top ten ranked teams we've won seven. The odds are you're going to have to beat two or three top ten teams to win a major tournament. I hope I'm wrong but unless Southgate has a Damascene conversion that's never going to change.
And what has that got to do with the price of fish!. Do you mean boring in his style of footy though, or boring in his character ?.
“Bellingham can’t do it all” well he did f’call today. I like the kid. He’s exactly what we need but today he seemed to let the game pass him by.
Hopefully Southgate will see the error of his ways and change this lopsided team. We need a massive improvement for the next game....I don't think anyone can look at England and consider them as serious contenders on the last two games....awful.
Hoijberg and Erikson can’t get a kick for there club sides in the prem but yet they dominate our midfield prima donas easily. We just don’t look like we have the fitness and intensity to deal with any half decent team.
After thinking about it,he's clever when were in a tournament.You build slowly because the ultimate aim is not to peek to soon.We win Slovenia and top the group.We hopefully get a favourable opponent in the knockout faze and then anything could happen.However I think we need to up our game.
Fair point and yes I did, but my point is as a general rule the best managers/coaches have no fear in letting the talent show their talents, I think most would agree that we have a wealth of talent and that talent is stifled by a negative minded manager.
I agree mate. I wanted Southgate gone pre tournament whilst the season was still playing out. But after it finished and especially now it would be madness to sack him. Hes done a brilliant job with man-management, getting them to gel well together, getting them to even like each other, which was clearly something that didn't happen with lampard, Gerrard, Scholes, etc. But tactically he's inept and I would have preferred a different approach pre-tournament but that didn't happen so we have to just continue to support Southgate and the lads. Fingers crossed for better performances
I agree. Didn't think Pickford should have come up to take the free kick either, he could have been caught out big time!
I’m not sure what point you are making compared to me? You are basically saying the same thing as me?
Found it - sorry for ignoring you. Guess I was arguing with too many people at once! You mentioned about failing over and over again. I presume you only classing winning the tournament as failing? If so, there's an awful lot of teams who have failed over the years. I guess that my expectations are a little lower than other people's. I was ecstatic that we got to the final four years ago and a World Cup Semi. I thought it was brilliant. Trippier scoring that goal against Sweden in the Quarter Final was a class moment. Same for Stones heading a corner in using the famous Love Train tactic at set pieces. Was I disappointed that we didn't win either competition? Yes, but that was based on an optimism rather than expectation on my part. As far your point about how we stop at 1-0. Yes, I concede I would rather us plough on and continue to attack. But I'd rather win in an ugly manner than spectacularly lose. I've had enough of that in the 90s. You also state that we won't win anything. You can't say this - it's speculation. On balance, we haven't been as impressive as Germany have, but we bossed them 2-0 in the last tournament, which involved getting an early lead and managing the game. We may suddenly gain momentum and win this one, who knows. But I trust this manager. He's the manager with the most tournament knock out wins in our history. Having said that, if we limp through the group stages and lose in the last 16, then I concede that he probably has to go. Its a results business. Hope this answers your post - sorry for not replying earlier. One of my pet hates is when someone ignores one of my posts.
Ahh ok Del, I can't really disagree with you there. Gareth has that likeability about him of course, but I think it's become clear now, that we need much more than that.
If we're to act and sack Southgate during the tournament we need to give it to Rio Ferdinand, Micah Richards, Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Frank Lampard with Alan Shearer and Lineker as backroom staff.