Makes you wonder why the England game was so slow and passionless. Never seen players like Kane and Foden look so scared to get involved. Makes you wonder what a proper coach would make of this England side.
In Kane's case it was because he had huge defenders ragging him all over the place without being penalised for most of the 90 minutes.
If your centre forward touches the ball once in a whole half, which kane did. You have to change your system. I honestly think Southgate is dross. I have no idea why he's allowed to manage our national team. So negative and his failure to adapt is telling.
That’s how you play if you’re Iceland with a limited number of class players. When your England with the talent at his disposal you use it, all of it.
Serbia have some decent players and a strong defence, they went 5 big lads across the back with instructions to mark and wrestle Kane out of the game.
I think the reason Kane only touched the ball once is down to his superb timing. He times it perfectly so as not to have to challenge for the ball. Just watch him without the ball on Thursday, he'll get to the ball carrier half a second after the ball has gone.
With a different Ref ( not that he reffed it badly overall) he'd have picked up a few free kicks and central defenders would have got yellow cards and had to be on their best behaviour..without that all he can do is drag his markers out of position and open the space for others...which is why Bellingham scored from the spot where Kane would normally be.
I didn’t really see any point in him coming deep for the sake of it if he has no one to play the ball to. Kane is brilliant at dropping deep and switching the ball but against Serbia’s deep back 5 his job was specifically to pin the centre backs occupy 1 or 2 of them and that creates the space for foden and Bellingham to roam around in the middle. If Kane was to drop deep all 3 players in the middle of the pitch would be coming to the ball and only one player would be running in behind (Bellingham) from deep.
Only my opinion, but Southgate just doesn't cut it. Now idea about game management, just content to let games go by. Not proactive at all
I though Foden, who is another player I rate highly, was off his game as well. Perhaps he was intimidated by the Serb defence? So many misplaced passes. We have a lot of candidates for that position. Kane is better than a target man.
As someone said somewhere Southgate is the type of bloke who puts his phone on low battery mode on 99%
I'd love have swapped Kane for Toney at HT. Toney only one in squad that could have occupied and battled with those Serb CBs.