Engerlund v Slovenia ..MDT

I was very grateful for the Euros filling the football void this summer but Jesus Christ this has made me pine for the domestic season. Absolute dirge.

"Oh but they finished top of the group". By luck more than judgement. We've scored the same number of goals as Scotland with near enough the best attacking talent in the tournament. 7 years and Southgate still churning out this garbage is unforgivable.

 

Just wow, Last 16 of a tournament with more questions than answers
Won't make the changes because if it works he'll be proved wrong

 

I've been watching it for the last couple of hours and I can confirm that the grass in my back garden has grown 0.7 millimetres during the England game

 

Saw Ange Postecoglu before the match doing some analysis. Get him in as England manager before the World Cup.

 

Screwed Hungary over as well ffs.

 

I’m not disputing that, although I thought Foden was better tonight than previously.

 

We have topped the group, kept two clean sheets and only conceded to a speculative long range effort that sneaked in the corner. Before the tournament all the talk was about how amazing our front six are, but how weak we look defensively without Maguire and Shaw fit. Well look what's happened, we have looked good defensively.

Going forward we did everything but score. We can't help it if our opponents park the bus and play for a point. Look how they celebrated that draw at full time as if they had won the tournament. It was embarrasing.

I am confident in the knock out stages when we play teams who have more ability that we we look back ourselves. It goes to show how bloated the tournament is with so many nations involved. There should be less groups.

 

Can I get some of what you're smoking?

 

Hopefully we draw Dagenham and Redbridge in the Round of 16.

 

Far better tactics today but it looked like England were finding their feet in a first game at the tournament after those two negative non-performances. Better ideas but no cohesion.

Not great but top of the group with hardly any energy expended. Important not to come across like the Man Utd fan who was whinging to me how difficult to be a United fan it is these days.

 

Too many Walkers in the team.

 

You don't seriously believe that, do you?! We've been woeful going forward

 

Two of what he’s having and a bag of scratchings please landlord

 

The defending champions Italy haven't finished top. France couldn't top their group. People expect the "bigger" nations to steamroll through teams. We will do just fine in the knock out stage. Whichever teams we play will go for it much more than the negative Charlies we've had to play so far. That will play in to our hands.

We see it with Barnsley. Many times playing a rubbish team has brought us down to their level and then we win games we aren't expected to.

 

No urgency from England. The number of our players who pass the ball and then simply stand or at best walk.

They don't push forward quickly for a return pass to attack..

 

We haven't had the players good enough or confident enough to take on players, ie dribble it scares defenders but we pass and mostly it's a defensive pass.

 

I'd argue after watching that....

We ended up with 3 "number 10s" on the pitch and not one of them actually playing it.

It was absolutely rubbish.

As Gary Neville has pointed out just now, we seem to want to shoehorn so many players into the starting eleven, that half the team is playing out of position to what they play at club level.

It's ridiculous

 

The fact that Southgate thought the solution to 2 prevous displays of tripe was to do nothing but stick Gallagher in the team - it says it all.

45 minutes wasted.

Second half wasn't much better. It won't get any better if we continue to play at a snail's pace in the face of our opponents.

We look like a League 2 team trying to impersonate Man City.

 

I agree with everything else that you said, but not this. Expanding the tournament to 24 teams was the best thing that has happened to European football for a long time. It's no longer the same few teams playing each other every four years, and in this tournament we've already seen that the smaller nations are no pushovers. In the long run it's going to level the playing field a bit, and that can only be a good thing.

Currently the only "problem" in my opinion is that too many teams qualify for the knockout games.