Quarter-Final - England 1-2 France - Saturday 10th December, 2022

[Reluctant Striker]

12 hours ago, 6666 said:

Was voted as England's player of the year and was probably our best player yesterday but unfortunately these types of dickheads are just gonna be dickheads. Some watch international football specifically for xenophobia driven nationalism. It doesn't matter that he's one of England's most consistent players.

There are those kinds for sure. And then even the mild ones that maybe don't realise themselves are perhaps associating way more with the 1 that looks like them. And those who think because a particular club.

At the Euro's it was Grealish (of 11th placed Villa)  and at the World Cup it's been Foden, urged on by Gary Neville. 

Man City had many players in this tournament, but will have no representation in the Team of the Tournament. Mainly because no national side can play like Man City. Having cherry picked Harlem Globetrotters best possible midfield & front line options.

At one stage Foden started trying to play like Rashford. Because England can actually play something like Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, even Man United, etc.

For me, Southgate did himself decide to use a Liverpool like midfield, and got bullied into trying a City style front line. Not least by someone who was in the dugout for Iceland 2016.

[Danny]

It’s so ingrained in society that it’s always going to be a lose-lose situation for black players, we’re lucky they stick around with the England team as they could easily say fuck this and boycott.

[ASF]

Southgate has done a decent job with England. Not great, but decent.

Before he was appointed manager, this were England's performances at big tournaments in the 10 previous years:

2006 World Cup - Quarter-finalists

Euro 2008 - DNQ

2010 World Cup - Last 16

Euro 2012 - Quarter-finalists

2014 World Cup - Group stage

Euro 2016 - Last 16

Finishing 4th at the last World Cup and getting to an Euro's final, first final of a major tournament you played in 55 years, and now another presence in the last 8, is a big improvement.

I think he has earned, at least, the opportunity of having another go at a big tournament.

[Dan+]

It needs context though. Southgate's two strengths are that he's manifested a decent dressing room and that he's made England very efficient in seeing off 'lesser' sides. I think England for example would've seen off Morocco when Spain, Portugal and Belgium failed.

But the truth is he's got probably a top 5 squad and I'm not convinced he's beaten a top 10 side once in a tournament. Germany the nearest thing to it but this is a Germany side who've gone out of two World Cup groups in a row, won only 3 of their last 11 games in tournaments, have also lost to South Korea, Japan, drawn at home to Hungary. It's as weak a Germany as I've seen. That's his biggest win - at home, to them.

Kind draws have helped England no end and people want to run away from that but it's true. When England hit Sweden or Ukraine in the quarters through it was progression as expected. When England hit a tougher one in France, it's an exit, as some of us expected.

He has not been a disaster but he's had three cracks and for me he's achieved par in them all in the context of the squad he's had against the opposition faced. With a proven winner supposedly offering his services, who would be the highest calibre manager of any international team in the world, then I think we are fools if we don't take that opportunity.

[Cicero]

Still think England are wasting a valuable player in Phillips. 

[Waylander]

I don't like Phillips for England some of his tackles are x-rated.

[Honey Honey]

I take a high enough quality vitamin supplement to remember what England were before Southgate. Thus I'd keep him on until we are disgraced again. Disgracing is common in international football. Look at this world cup.

This defeat was fine margins. No matter what tactic and subs you want to come up with, a game with France would still be about fine margins. There are no greats in the international game today. Whoever wins got there because luck and fine margins fell their way. Fine margins got us to within a kick or two of winning the Euros. All we can ask is to be in the mix each time,  something we weren't very often before. Southgate has us in that mix, until he hasn't then he should stay.

This isn't club football and this isn't a golden generation.

[6666]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

Still think England are wasting a valuable player in Phillips. 

He's the only real midfielder that will close down and be the enforcer if needed. Rice hasn't looked great for England without him and the midfield looks unbalanced with Rice as the only DM.

Philips' injury is a bigger reason for him not playing a big part this time. If he played more this season then if would've played more at the World Cup instead of Henderson and maybe even Rice.

[6666]

18 hours ago, nudge said:

Well, that explains why he missed that penalty...

Wayne Rooney set to come out of retirement.

[Cicero]

2 hours ago, Waylander said:

I don't like Phillips for England some of his tackles are x-rated.

It's not his off the ball game its his on the ball game, and the balance he provides in midfield. 

It's similar to England ignoring Carrick when in all likelyhood he would've brought a lot of balance to the Lampard/Gerrard debacle. 

[Waylander]

It will be interesting to see if breaks through once fit the next time a tournament comes around.

[ASF]

5 hours ago, Honey Honey said:

I take a high enough quality vitamin supplement to remember what England were before Southgate. Thus I'd keep him on until we are disgraced again. Disgracing is common in international football. Look at this world cup.

This defeat was fine margins. No matter what tactic and subs you want to come up with, a game with France would still be about fine margins. There are no greats in the international game today. Whoever wins got there because luck and fine margins fell their way. Fine margins got us to within a kick or two of winning the Euros. All we can ask is to be in the mix each time,  something we weren't very often before. Southgate has us in that mix, until he hasn't then he should stay.

This isn't club football and this isn't a golden generation.

Top post mate. It's all good to have ambition, but I do think Southgate has done a lot, with a generation of players less talented than previous ones (Mid 90's to late 00's, for an instance). 

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 minutes ago, ASF said:

Top post mate. It's all good to have ambition, but I do think Southgate has done a lot, with a generation of players less talented than previous ones (Mid 90's to late 00's, for an instance). 

I don't even think you can say Southgate hasn't shown ambition. A world cup semi final, a Euro final, and then getting knocked out to the side that tbh are probably the favourites (especially now with the teams remaining) - there's nothing unamibitous about that.

Sure you can point to the UEFA Nations League... but that tournament was just invented to spin more money for UEFA & replace international friendlies - I don't think it should be viewed as that serious of a tournament. Especially when the form from it doesn't seem to translate over to the actual high pressure tournaments like the World Cup.

I've given Southgate plenty of shit because I thought his tactics are generally dire and dour ("no tactics, just vibes" I'm pretty sure I've said several times) - I think in this world cup he demonstrated an England side that isn't afraid to take the game to teams (other than the USA game where he played it safe to get a result that would most likely have England sitting pretty ahead of the Wales match).

We didn't look totally shit compared to France... we looked like a good side that was just unlucky in a really high stakes match. We weren't outclassed, I think we played better than France in many regards. On a different day, Loris doesn't make as many saves and things go differently for us... or we get a ref that's less shit.

Some people have spouted off about getting a "proven winner" in - I think that was the rationale behind getting Sven & Capello. And Capello was an absolute disaster. Sven wasn't that bad but I also don't think he even really comes close to Southgate as England manager.

For me, if Southgate goes we should be looking at Graham Potter or Sean Dyche. Potter we'll never get because why would he leave behind that Chelsea salary to manage England? I wouldn't, I can't imagine he would either. Dyche would raise so many eyebrows because the step up from Burnley to England is absolutely massive. Otherwise we're looking at a Poch (no thanks, good manager for building a club - but I think maybe not the best manager for delivering in knockout football under high pressure) or Mourinho (which I think could be another Capello situation).

So basically, I'm in agreement @Honey Honey, but with more words. It's not club football, this isn't a golden generation. And I think on the whole he's done a good job with the national team considering that before he was manager... it was something of an absolute shitshow.

[Rick]

We won’t win anything with him. 

[Devil-Dick Willie]

5 hours ago, Honey Honey said:

I take a high enough quality vitamin supplement to remember what England were before Southgate. Thus I'd keep him on until we are disgraced again. Disgracing is common in international football. Look at this world cup.

This defeat was fine margins. No matter what tactic and subs you want to come up with, a game with France would still be about fine margins. There are no greats in the international game today. Whoever wins got there because luck and fine margins fell their way. Fine margins got us to within a kick or two of winning the Euros. All we can ask is to be in the mix each time,  something we weren't very often before. Southgate has us in that mix, until he hasn't then he should stay.

This isn't club football and this isn't a golden generation.

"We shouldn't aim to be better because we used to be worse"

 

Okay Stoke city. 

[Honey Honey]

1 hour ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

"We shouldn't aim to be better because we used to be worse"

 

Okay Stoke city. 

We also used to be better and lost by fine margins then too. 

Changing the manager might give you the illusion of aiming better but as I explained you're not actually getting any closer to being better. It's just a different dice throw of the same odds.

[Devil-Dick Willie]

55 minutes ago, Honey Honey said:

We also used to be better and lost by fine margins then too. 

Changing the manager might give you the illusion of aiming better but as I explained you're not actually getting any closer to being better. It's just a different dice throw of the same odds.

Wrong. Your current odds are fixed. 

[Cicero]

When have England beaten a better team than them in a major tournament? Germany in the euros but they’ve been in a massive decline. 

[Carnivore Chris]

5 hours ago, Cicero said:

When have England beaten a better team than them in a major tournament? Germany in the euros but they’ve been in a massive decline. 

Argentina and Germany.......in 1966 

[Tommy]

10 minutes ago, Carnivore Chris said:

Germany.......in 1966 

And without cheating?

[Stan]

12 minutes ago, Tommy said:

And without cheating?

[Tommy]

4 minutes ago, Stan said:

Karma. And you would have lost that game anyway. 

[CaaC (John)+]

3 minutes ago, Stan said:

You beat me to it, Lampard's goal against Germany 

[Devil-Dick Willie]

That goal wasn't allowed because England can't score from something that's not a speculative cross, set piece or penalty. Lampard did the crime and paid the time.

[Michael]

On 12/12/2022 at 00:45, Lucas said:

Think some tough decisions need to be made personally.

Is Southgate really capable of winning a tournament? I just don't think he is. We've lost the three biggest games when it's mattered sadly.

I think our problem as a nation is we're too nice, we seem content to accept losing when we feel we've done better than expected. Semi's in Russia, Final of Euro's last Summer, Quarters against the World Champs yesterday.

But for me, the bar is set too low. Why are we happy to keep accepting these defeats? The performance was decent yesterday and we were unlucky but we still always come up short.

We are a power nation with the biggest league and a pretty gifted pool of players to use, failure should now be measured by not winning a trophy.

Croatia, Italy and an average France. It's not a good track record to have lost all three and perspective needs to be had when you consider out of the last three tournaments the way its panned out beautifully for us, we've missed a massive chance to win something three times. 

Southgate gains credit amongst the public for achieving a better tournament record than recent others but you have to look at the talent we have and say, are we maximising it to its full potential?

My worry is looking back in 8-10 years like with the early 00's team and thinking, how the fuck did we not win anything with those players? It just has a whiff that could happen again and I think the FA need to think long and hard now about whether they give him another chance or whether they dare to flip the script.

I'm not saying it'll definitely work by the way, but I'd rather try a new approach and go big than just keep accepting mediocrity.

I agree with some of what you've said, but mate, you can't be calling this French national team average. Even without injured players such as Benzema, Nkunku, Kante, Pogba, Lucas Hernandez and Kimpembe, they still have a very strong squad. They are the favourites to win the World Cup. If you are calling them average, how would you describe how good the rest of the teams are? The fact is that this French team is a very strong team, they are strong in all areas of the pitch, and they have a good balance within the team. Despite how well Morocco have been playing at this World Cup, I am sure this French team will knock them out. Even without the many key French players who were injured before this World Cup, they are still able to field a very strong starting 11 and even their bench looks very strong. 

We have to be pragmatic, we lost to the defending champions France. Could we have beaten them had Kane scored that 2nd penalty, yes, there was a real possibility of that happening. But he missed and we got knocked out by the favourites for this World Cup. This French side is strong in all positions. You say that the England national team has a lot of talent and I'd agree. But can we say that our national team is strong in all positions? Does our defence compare to the French defence? Harry Maguire v Varane or Maguire v Upamecano? Is Pickford as good as Lloris? I'd even say that the French defensive midfielders are better than ours. Going forward, sure, there are very few players in the world as good as Bellingham, Foden and Saka for example. Even Kane plays his role as the lone centre forward extremely well. But we do have weaker areas in our team. I think the French exposed these weaknesses on Saturday.

We have a very strong national team, but there are plenty of other strong national teams out there. Winning a World Cup is not easy at all given the competition and it's the vital moments in a game that count. Can we blame Southgate for England's loss against the French? I don't think we really can. He put out a side that most of us were happy with. It wasn't his fault that Kane missed that 2nd penalty. Had Kane scored and if England went on to win, everyone would have been hailing Southgate as the second coming, but alas it wasn't to be. However, I believe that we should be pragmatic and realistic about the match and about this England team as a whole. Lets now focus on the Euros and who knows, with a bit of luck, we could be European Champions in a couple of years time.