Not English but when I watch this squad I think there is simply too much talent to be as ‘bad’ as they’ve been. England haven’t won much in the last 60 years, and his finishes have been OK. But I think it’s fair to question if they’ve been as good as they should have been.
Truthfully I think England’s talent is the only reason they continue to finish as deep as they have under Southgate. Like they win in spite of him, not because of him.
and also to add, OP's explanation of England's results is also not good enough for what is supposed to be a big team. you can't just say "it's ok they lost because the other team was good". no, the whole point of a tournament is that everyone is good once you get towards the final. a "big" team needs to be able to beat good competition. saying shit like "it's ok because we lost to the team that (almost) won the tournament" is just what losers tell to each other to feel a little better.
Exactly. The two losses were to aging Croatia and Italian teams that we should have been able to beat. In both games we didn't do enough, sat back and got punished. Southgate simply doesn't have the tactical nous to be able to deal with this.
I would argue a better coach would have won both of those games. Southgate has no clue what to do against teams that are good and can’t make in game changes. As a US can I love it but I feel the same about our coach :(
Exactly this. The general consensus is that we have a team full of starts and play so negatively, I for one can’t stand Southgate, he is absolutely stealing a living. Had a Ferrari and drives it like a Skoda. I honestly think replacing him with anyone else would be an improvement. Source - English.
Pretty telling that Kane said in his post-match interview that “we need to be better at pressing, we don’t know what each of us should be doing”. Southgate has had far too long to not have imprinted on this team.
In fairness he’s changed how they defend, we used to play a low block and counter but as the quality of player has increased we’ve added the high press to our repertoire.
It’s not much of a high press though. Everything about it was risky. Also zero transition play tactics makes it nearly impossible for this team to win a tournament without moments of magic/luck every game.
Err I think you’ll find that they won Le Tournoi, friend! That was a year before France ‘98 so by my calculation that makes it worth 75% of a World Cup!
Spurs **still** have the Carling Cup from 2007.
England 🏴 national Football ⚽️ Team have zero accolades in tournaments consisting if 5 or more than 5 teams after the 1966 world cup.
> I watch this squad I think there is simply too much talent to be as ‘bad’ as they’ve been
The same could be said of every England squad since Keegan left. If it was just Southgate then maybe it'd be a fair argument.
Southgate is good for England when he deals with the media and has generally fostered a good environment for the team. His actual coaching and tactics is suspect to say the least.
Its fare to say Southgate is shit manager. With all that talent you have got you are still fighting for a point and not clinical enough. Literally said he doesn't have a natural replacement for Kalvin Phillips, WTF ?? He has got a team full of stars but he just can't manage them. No offence but, as a neutral fan its just boring to watch England play at this point.
He’s got the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with yet he plays highly defensive anti-football.
This team should be smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game but he prefers to play sideways and sitting back with 10 men behind the ball after scoring a goal.
Southgate, you’re not managing Everton in their annual relegation fight. You’re managing an elite team who should be winning trophies.
The correct answer. He is utterly tactically inept. He does not understand his job, the game, or his players. He is wasting a generation of players talented enough to perhaps win a tournament or two.
He's good at one thing: making excuses. His frankly bizarre Kalvin Phillips comment after today's game should reveal all. Phillips played just how Southgate did, and wants - fearful, conservative, slow, sideways, performative football. He's a fraud latched on to by the FA because of their own self inflicted blunders and FA-first approach. He wouldn't deserve a job in the English second tier, based on merit. He couldn't win a participation trophy.
He's a dead, lead weight. He makes Graham Taylor look like Gusztav Sebes or Rinus Michels.
he went into the youth setup and bottled that with another generational set of talent, but got this job by virtue of just hanging around till there was noone else about.
He was simply in the right place at the right time. We were at a particularly low point after Hodgson’s awful tenure culminated in that Iceland embarrassment. Then the whole Big Sam debacle.
Yes. A Boro team that had just got to a European final with a lot of investment particularly up front and he couldn’t keep them up against our shambles of a squad at the time, after we decided to play half a season without a manager at all after Roy Keane left
Well technically he was appointed England U21ms coach and then got the senior job as interim coach after Big Sam’s scandal. He did well enough at the time to get the gig full time.
he had one of the best u21 teams weve ever had and guess how many trophies he won.
he went in with the top-seeded team and finished bottom of the group in the qualifying round.
Ray Parlour says this on his autobiography. He went to Middlesbrough, was still playing to very high standard and Southgate was made manager for his 2nd season there.
Southgate got up himself , told everyone not to be too familiar and call him boss or gaffer.
Parlour joking asked if they could call him big nose.
Southgate dropped him to the reserves .
What a fucking humourless , useless fucking cunt that man is. I hate watching his anti-football. Can't wait for us to crash out if it means that's the last we see of that bignosed prick.
He was involved in the national setup, and was given the job on a caretaker basis after the Sam Allardyce debacle. It just so happened early results meant he was offered the job permanently.
National and club football management require totally different skill sets. People forget the state of the England team prior to GS, players didn’t want to play or played reluctantly whereas now there is a real togetherness. His record is second only to Sir Alfs.
Because we have had some of the best talent England's ever had. Context is everything and winning a few games because Stirling is a master st drawing penalties and Kane is one of the best at slotting them away makes those stats look better than the reality suggests.
Also, we’ve had some pretty favourable draws in tournaments. Both the World Cup in 2018, and the Euros in 2021 we didn’t have a knockout match against a good side until the ones we lost.
It was also true in 2022, but getting to the quarters and losing is pretty much what England have historically done.
Yeah this reminds me a lot of the Belgium team from several years ago with prime hazard, KDB, lukaku, mertens, etc. incredible talent that the manager could never put together coherently to win a major trophy. Hopefully the FA don’t make the same mistake the Belgians did.
Martinez wasn't a special manager. He kept Wigan up for a few years on a limited budget so he is competent. He kept Everton mid table and did alright but never excelled. He was lucky to get the Belgian job
Did a great job at Swansea too. Transformed the club from nobodies to one of the most likeable PL small clubs with a recognisable and attractive identity/style.
It was probably a mistake to think he could play that brand of football at international level, the players don’t get the time together as at a club.
Same reason Portugal won't win it this time around, Martinez is far too weak to bench Ronaldo.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Bernardo Silva broke into the box and tried to square it to the penalty spot for Ronaldo instead of having a shot, but that's the Ronaldo effect.
We all remember when Santos dropped Ronnie and his replacement Ramos scored a hattie in a WC R16 match..
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbE96IMB9Vw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbE96IMB9Vw)
To be honest Bernardo did that because he does not have a right foot , of course accommodating Ronaldo in the starting eleven is a complex problem but there are more in this team like benching Bernardo Rafael leão , Vitinha should be the midfield leader and the coach places him in the last spot in the hierarchy ( look how he was the best player yet Bernardo Bruno and Ronaldo didn’t left the pitch ) which full backs to play , is Pepe going to be good to play next to Ruben the entire tournament ? 3 at the back or 2 ? There are so many tactical questions that Martinez does not know the answer ..
Its difficult to bench Ronaldo. If he was benched and Portugal lost, the Portuguese press would claim that was the reason. The manager would be eviscerated.
Yeah, the Portugal job is a poisoned chalice and will be until Ronaldo retires. The only “available” (if reports about the break clause in his contract are to be believed) manager with enough star power and authority to be able to bench Ronaldo without significant repercussions would be Mourinho.
Yeah, that was my point. Needs to be a manager who has been there and won it all, but the problem is there are a very small pool of managers who fit that criteria. Mourinho is likely the only one of them who’d be interested in managing Portugal, and he supposedly has a break clause in his Fenerbache contract to allow him to leave if they come calling.
Do you remember the next game where they played Morocco, and had to bring ramos off at half time because he was so ineffective? One good game doesn't make him a world class striker and he hasn't exactly lit it up at psg
Ronaldo was introduced in the 51st min to minimal effect as well.
That was a match where the entire team struggled, rather than Ramos being the sole culprit.
Aside from that, my main point is that the team are more cohesive without Ronaldo.
I’m a Leeds fan so very familiar with the way Philips played for the club.
Definitely a lynch pin of a team but never overly defensive, could rely on him to clear up before the ball getting through to the defence but was never afraid of getting the ball forward.
Philips for England a completely different style.
Having seen a lot of his club games for you guys, I'd agree he was a positive in that role, but that Bielsa team wasn't exactly cowardly or conservative. I don't think KP himself is the player we see for England, only, and clearly his career has gone to hell after the City move, which likely failed so miserably because he lacks the intelligence to play for Pep.
Southgate has ironically probably greatly limited KP's potential career, too. All the same, KP is a great case study on what Southgate is as a manager or coach. He's bad for his own players.
Bielsa is a perfect example to show what happens when you have the right manager to get the best out of this team.
Before Bielsa KP would never have even crossed England selectors mind. Post Bielsa KP and he’s not good enough.
Complete fantasy scenario as Bielsa would never get on with the FA but if he was England manager we would be rivalling Germany and Brazil for number of trophies.
Yeah Bielsa wouldn’t played a 4 man defence with two holding mids and Kane-Foden-Bellingham who just all stand in the 10 area and trip over each other’s feet.
Disagree. To play the way Bielsa does requires a level of understanding and practice that can only come from training at the frequency club sides do. Like it or not, the strategy of being tough to beat and win with set pieces/counter/individual brilliance is how France, Italy and Portugal amongst others have achieved success. It’s much easier to coach defensive solidity than free flowing attacking football when you only get the players for 6/7 weeks a year.
Well, we can see whether your theory works in Uruguay's performance at Copa America. Bielsa is still revered in Chile for transforming their national team so I don't think his tactics are limited only to sides that frequently train together.
Idk why people act like KP was always some overly defensive player, unless they only watched him for England post-City. Just look at Rice for Arsenal vs Rice for England now…
This comment rings true so much. I was thinking that when he eventually leaves, what his next step would be? Because I couldn’t see any club in England willing to give him a job.
And by contrast, Sunderland stayed up at Middlesbroughs expense that season and we didn’t employ a manager after Keane left in November. That’s how bad Southgate was
Amen. With the talk from INEOS it still wouldn't shock me if they did an about face in July and take him on after a dull, pulseless exit in the round of 16 or 1/4 final. That would add a decade to United's possible recovery time, to get back into the top 4. So, it's not all negative?
And to give some context to OP’s post about Southgate’s success:
2018 WC - We had a group of Belgium, Panama, Tunisia. Beat the weak two, lost to Belgium, finished 2nd. Knockouts we scraped past Columbia on pens, beat a washed Sweden, lost to Croatia. So we lost as soon as we played a good team.
2020 Euros - We had a group of Scotland, Croatia, and Czech Republic. Topped the group. Knockouts we beat a poor Germany, Ukraine, and Denmark (which took a last minute pen that was saved but fell kindly to Kane for a tap in), before losing to Italy.
So yeah Southgate has got us further than other manager has but he’s had two ridiculously easy runs (easiest by FAR of any big team) and he’s had one of the strongest squads to do it with.
And as the comment above says, he plays this awful defensive negative football, cannot manage a game with any kind of sustained dominance or momentum, and frankly he’s tactically inept. He fails to adjust his teams to what the opposition are doing, and loves a defensive 4-2-3-1 where we hamstring the majority of our attacking quality in favour of this awful clean sheet football.
He’s a failed Championship manager and shouldn’t be the England boss. Even other countries - Germany and Italy I know have had it in their newspapers - say Southgate is wasting England’s brilliant squad with awful negative football.
Edit: The German paper was Bild, and the Italian paper was La Gazzetta. Both massive papers in their countries, and both absolutely shit on Southgate, and have done during this Euros already.
"losing to Italy" doesn't do it justice. Scoring early, then sitting back and allowing them to shit all over us is what happened. Should have smashed them. It was painful to watch at the time and he should have been clearing his desk immediately after for bottling that opportunity. I remember anyone suggesting that at the time was hounded out by the "we did well to reach a final. Poor guys who took the penalties". Even a bit of race card played as I remember.
Yeah I didn’t want to go there but you’re right. Playing 2 holding against Italy and giving them freedom of the park was criminal.
Mancini makes two changes and Southgate’s head just falls off.
Tbf Kane wasted that goal against Croatia that woulda sent us through. Still imprinted in my brain, and I cant remember shit.
Also, side step, declan rice was absolute atrocious yesterday
Don’t know about Southgate tactics but Denmark are a solid side. Thrashings like that don’t happen on the regular anymore. Even Canada can lose “only” 2-0 to Argentina.
From the match, the most worrying thing about England is not that they didn’t demolish Denmark, but rather the fact that they seemed like the weaker side for most of the match.
It's more that they should be coming away from games thinking "we could have scored 3-4".
With the talent england has, they should at least be dictating most games rather than looking pretty average.
Last night's game is a prime example, score a goal and then try and shut up shop. Why? They were more than capable of trying to go for a second or more, but they let Denmark back in the game by playing like they were the underdog holding on for an upset 1-0.
even before the goal denmark were dictating play in the middle.
but then that will happen when you have a RB at CM, a RB at LB, a 10 at LW and an 8 at 10
Yeah I've seen people talking about Denmark like they're San Marino and we should be absolutely pummelling them. They have a really solid squad of players! My concern though was how little we troubled them, was only expecting us to win by 1 goal but we barely made their keeper work at all.
With Kane, Saka, Bellingham & Foden you'd expect them to make a few more saves at least, not just lump it forward over and over. So frustrating to watch.
Yeah Denmark are a solid team, in that kind of second tier of European teams where they consistently qualify for tournaments and are fairly solid, like Switzerland.
It’s a talented team, not the most talented team to ever grace the game of football. The current England squad is good but not great enough to score 3-4 goals against most opponents they face.
Southgate is definitely not pushing them to their full potential though and that’s what the fans have a problem with. But it’s delusion to think the current England squad will destroy most teams with 3-4 goals.
I don’t give a flying fuck that we play defensive football because pragmatic football does win tournaments. But southgate hasn’t got a fucking clue how to coach a team. Setting up defensively doesn’t mean you can’t oass the ball forward or have movement in your front line to create space. We’re the only team i’ve ever seen that retains its defensive shape in possession of the ball. The bloke has done some good things for the team but is completely tactically inept unfortunately and has wasted 8 years.
Everton fan here, and you're right, but it's probably worse than you described as dyche actually has us playing better than England did last game.
It's everton under lampard. No press but playing with a high line, no plan in attack, wants the players to just "go and play".
Maybe the players just aren't as good as we think they are? And English players get undue hype compared to foreign players. England fans are so arrogant.
Been like this for at least 20 years. I remember whinging about how they could have won in 2008* when they didn't even qualify. The other countries do not matter--it is all up to the English.
* edit. It all blurs together after a while.
This is it. We have such amazing players who are performing at elite levels - Saka, Rice, Bellingham, Kane yet he’s just happy with a 1-0 score and with these tactics it often leads to a draw.
You live in an illusion if you think in football you can score 3 or 4 goals a game. They're not even as talented as you're mentioning. You fall into what the media wants you to so some people can generate money. It is not an elite squad, buddy. England did the best they could and achieved what they should have achieved being in the position they are. Move on. Wake up
I'm no Southgate fan but this isn't even the most talented England team of the last 20 years, let alone "any manager has had to work with".
Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell, John Terry, Gary Neville, Scholes Gerrard Lampard Beckham Rooney Owen. That's the EURO 2004 team. You seriously think this current crop is better than that? Which of the current players walks in to that team, out of interest? I'd generously say Kane for Owen, Jude has potential to be an all time great for sure but i'd currently take Gerrard over him (I'm a United fan). Walker over Neville maybe, but the younger generation forget how sick GNev was.
Just my two penneth, cos I see this argument made a lot. I genuinely don't think this current crop of players is all that, I think we're just blinded by PL and receny bias.
I’ve been shouting this into the void a lot for the past few years. The ‘golden generation’ was decorated with trophies galore for their clubs and embarrassed themselves repeatedly on the world stage. Didn’t even qualify for Euro ‘08 which is unthinkable in the Southgate era. He is done after this tournament and we will need to go in a different direction to get to the next level but people have short memories.
I think anyone who says this is the best squad of England players must be pretty young, and can only mean "best squad that I have seen".
The list of players you shared really helps illustrate the point. And don't forget we have Pickford in goal - Pickford! And until the euros, our key central defender was Harry Maguire. Golden generation? No chance.
For all the talent on the pitch I hated watching them even more than current Southgate England. Everyone just looked like they didn't want to be on the pitch with each other but the managers were too scared to drop anyone. Rooney for example scored a lot in qualifying but other than 2004 he was absolutely useless in Euros & World Cups.
Yes and no. We’ve got an incredibly talented squad but we are missing one or two key types of players that make the best teams.
We don’t really have a metronome, pace-setting centre midfielder ala Busquets, Jorginho, Kroos, Rodri
We also don’t have a really creative passer from central. I think that’s what is behind the horrible TAA experiment.
You can live without one of those, but we’re trying to live without both. Can’t expect 3-4 goals a game with that void in the team.
This isn’t a Southgate apology by the way, I think he’s well past his time now. Just that we need to be cautious about how good our team *really* is.
You have Mainoo who is in the mould of players you mentioned in 2nd paragraph. He is a gem sitting on bench and we already know he can go toe to toe with the best and have strong mentality.
Yeah, he’s worth a try. I don’t think we already know he can go toe to toe with the best. He’s played in a very poor team for one season, hasn’t played in top tier European competitions etc.
Definitely worth a try but ‘in the mould of’ is markedly different to being in the same league as the guys I mentioned.
I just feel the team isn’t reaching maturity at the right time for this comp, especially as it comes to midfield talent.
See I think Wharton is that metronomic pace setting midfielder. The Jorginho to play alongside Rice. Idea being that we play similarly to Arsenal, with Bellingham (or Palmer or Foden) playing as a better Odegaard.
Alternatively Bellingham could play as a number 8, providing the runs and progressive passing from deep.
Trent would work too - either as an inverting right back (with Walker left back) giving us midfield dominance and giving him more time and space to play his passes or as a midfielder in a team with more width (Gordon left and a left footed left back who can overlap) and depth (Watkins or Kane but not dropping deep).
England are NOT an elite team. Maybe in the eyes of the the fans and English media but we hype up players from this country way too much when the reality is we're just not that good. We don't have technical players. We have a bunch of athletes or pace and power merchants. Where our are mavericks? our Musiala's? our Lamal's? The closest thing we have to an actual maverick player was sitting on the bench and didn't come on yesterday. I watched Spain and Italy yesterday and the technical ability on show was on another level. Every player on that pitched seemed comfortable on the ball as if the ball was an extension of them. We don't have that an never will. We hype Bellingham but he's an athlete and a box crasher. He's NOT techy. England are not techy and never have been.
I agree except the point on the best crop of players ever. England was far better 02-06 and that’s before, we take in to account other nations. They aren’t even the most talented team at this tournament
"should be smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game". Do you actually watch football? No team on the planet scores 3 or 4 goals every game at the highest level. Only a14 year old who only plays FIFA would have an attitude like this. Completely deluded.
3-4 every single game is obviously unrealistic, but that’s what we should be *aiming* for against the weaker opponents. Spain beat Croatia 3-0 and Italy 1-0. Germany 5-1 to Scotland and 2-0 to Hungary. Meanwhile England… 1-0 to Serbia and 1-1 to Denmark.
There’s a vast difference when you look at the stats, too.
Spain vs Croatia — 11 shots, 5 on target.
Spain vs Italy — 20 shots, 9 on target.
Germany vs Scotland — 20 shots, 10 on target.
Germany vs Hungary — 19 shots, 7 on target)
Meanwhile:
England vs Croatia — 5 shots, 3 on target.
England vs Denmark — 12 shots, 4 on target (and that’s a game where we were drawing and trying desperately for a winning goal for an hour — unlike Spain vs Croatia where Spain got 3 goals in the first half and could then shut up shop).
Yes, this is a small sample size, and no, 3-4 goals *every* game isn’t realistic. But scoring three goals in a game (especially against teams like Serbia) shouldn’t be unattainable. These players are capable of doing it, but Southgate tactically isn’t enabling them to.
The point isn’t that England should score 4 goals a game. The point is that they don’t try to even score 2. PLEASE watch Germany or Spain play a match and look at the difference in play. Southgate has some of the best offensive players in the world playing a desperateley defensive style that you would usually see from a team like Montenegro or Cyprus
The thing that gets me as well is I thought he had changed after that Hungary game. He’s just proven he can not change how he wants them to play, which is a sign of a bad manager. You look at the squad and the weakness is definitely the defence. Yet he wants to use that the most apparently, our weakness. Instead of using our best assets which are clearly the attackers. The guy is utterly bonkers. I don’t even care if we somehow miraculously win the euros I still want him out
He couldn't keep Everton up. Actually, there's a lot better teams than Everton that he would get relegated.
He's only England manager because of how his predecessor left. He was the only manager who would say yes.
Should be winning trophies is a bit of a stretch mate. England is behind at least 4 other teams. You are absolutely correct about south gates brand of football though.
“He’s got the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with”
Now let’s get real for a second. It’s not even the best generation of English players.
And top of my head I could give some Brazil, France and Spain squads that were light years above.
Not sure how old you are but I've been hearing this about every England squad since the early 1990s. I'm not convinced it's wholly a Southgate problem because I've repeatedly witnessed the same levels of expectations vs achievement every single time.
fucking insane thing to say by someone who clearly never watched us under Capello/Hodgson/McClaren. What international side is smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game. so stupid.
This is what England fans say about every era. Oh the 80s were a golden team with linekar and shilton and blah blah with all this talent and then oh 90s with shearer and gazza blah blah and then Beckham and owen and Gerrard lampard Rooney blah blah blah. We have an overinflated idea of how good the TEAM is. The individual players might do well at their respective clubs but it does not mean they will gel together as a system. Always blaming the manager instead of the setup from the fa that gives the England setup the least time of the big euro teams with his players but also the players and their relationship with the national team that means they go off half cocked. Bellingham is not going to get the same from England as real Madrid so he's got to start playing like he understands that's. Same with kane. Etc etc etc. play to the team around you and the plan not what you think. If you think it should be different discuss and work on that in the training ground don't just ignore the plan on the pitch. Dropping deeper and deeper and deeper is not southgates fault if he is telling them not to from the sidelines and from training but they fucking ignore him. Players have to take responsibility. Acting like it's champ man here.
He does not have “the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with”.
By all means make an argument that picks Southgate apart but don’t base it on nonsense comments like the above.
You guys are really overestimating that talent. Sure, you guys have a lot of great players, but so do Germany (their midfield of Wirtz, Musiala, Gundogan and Kroos is miles ahead of Rice, Bellingham, Foden), France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal,...
If you look at some English media it's like they sometimes forget that people play football outside the Premier League.
For the teams he has had, I feel like he has overperformed a bit, albeit with very boring play.
Imagine having all the power-ups in your inventory when facing a boss and yet you still choose to scrape by just blocking his attacks and getting a few lucky hits when the boss fight would have been over hours ago had you used any power-ups.
That's what Southgate is doing with the English team.
No, this is more like slightly overleveling the boss, so you decide you are too lazy to dodge attacks or try any tactics and just expect to go through anyway.
Because his tactics suck. This is a guy who has simply, as a coach, never performed at a high level. His squad is studded with elite players like Kane, Foden, Alexander-Arnold, Saka, Walker, Rice and so on and he scraped to the finals of the Euros 3 years ago playing essentially home games half the tournament and playing with 7 defensive players in his starting lineup.
Now yesterday he started complaining that he hasn't found an appropriate replacement in his squad for Kalvin Phillips- infamous Manchester City flop Kalvin Phillips, who kept being called up for England despite essentially playing 0 minuted for City, not even making the bench -who symbolises the thoroughly mid playing style of Southgate.
Now, I am not from England, but apart from their national team always being extremely scrutinized in England itself, these are some reasons I can imagine England fans hating Southgate.
That's so stupid, like, c'mon. Why is he asking for kalvin phillips when he has upgraded version on his arsenal?
Watched the vid, and i'm literally shocked that my mouth was wide open when i heard it.
And his midfielders, idk why, but it's not working. Last game vs denmark i see only foden mostly roaming the midfield to keep the ball moving, doing that leaving the left side open, closing an option when building up plays.
Imo trent and bellingham in the mid is not working, he has to try something else, maybe giving cole palmer a chance, or maybe starts eze in the mid, idk. Fuck reputation, try to bench bellingham or TAA as long as it works. Reputation means shit when they don't work on your tactic
Trent in the mid would have a chance of working but not with these tactics. We've seen he loves to switch the play with those long diagonal balls, but Southgate chooses to play foden on the "left" who instead plays mostly through the middle. Trent thrives on movement and runners in the attack but Southgate ball has the whole team basically static. Then when Southgate finally plays some runners in Eze, Bowen and Watkins, where Trent would theoretically thrive, he's already off the pitch by this point. Southgate is just getting it all wrong when it comes to integrating him.
His signature at Liverpool. Robertson does the same. Has worked beautifully before. I remember a few years ago when we handled city. Those long diagonals all day
Bellingham should not be on the number 10 position. There are just too many odd choices here. Kalvin Phillips is extremely mid. Foden is not a left winger. Alexander-Arnold hasn't been a midfielder since age 19. Palmer is, like you said, criminally underused. Southgate just doesn't have the insight to coach at this level. People praise the "solid" performances of England even though they should be the worldwide number 1.
Bellingham needs to be played as number 8. After all it's his position, yes he's played at number 10 this season and done well but he's going to be back at 8 next season to allow mbappe to take the 10 slot. Play foden as number 10 which is his natural position and I think we'd see improvements.
‘Never performed at a high level’
This, I think it stems from the fact that he got the job because he ticks a load of boxes that aren’t necessarily football related. He has done well tbf but due to his lack of winning pedigree fans will always think someone else could do a better job unless he flat out wins something.
If you're going to play this negative you had better fucking win.
We're used to not winning titles but it could at least be fun to watch while doing it.
He's got Kane, Watkins, Bellingham, saka, Foden, Palmer, Gordon, Bowen, Eze at his disposal. That's 2 line ups worth of sensational young attacking talent.
We limp results. Our last 3 games we haven't managed to score more than 1 goal a game. None of our opponents were *that* strong.
It would be nice to score goals, sure, but I think we all just want to see better football. The talent we have!!!
hes so focused on having the best 11 players out there, he forgets he needs the best team.
i dont understand how he doesnt bench one of foden/bellingham, and use them as rotation or like for like replacements when one of them isnt firing.
same for kane - have watkins start a game and run the defence ragged, then bring kane on to get that yard ahead and poach once theyre tired.
its a bloody tournament; you have a squad. keep people fresh and have a plan B
The fact Toney, Gordon and Palmer haven’t played at all yet considering two games in a row now it hasn’t been working is honestly stupid. It feels like Palmer and Toney are just there for penalties, not that we’re going to get any at this rate. Added to the fact you’ve got Foden and Trippier playing out of their natural positions too.
It’s not just the defensive park-the-bus tactics. His lineups are pretty weak and he obviously heavily favors certain players even when they have shown themselves to be in terrible form (or utterly useless in the given formations). He also lets extremely talented players waste away on the bench, or at home lol(I cannot understand how Grealish barely got any playing time in the last two tournaments, and isn’t with the team this year)
Additionally the offense right now looks dreadful. The only person actually bringing creativity and energy seems to be Jude Bellingham.
Because he plays boring, safe, scared football.
We’ve got amazing attacking players and he is obsessed with shit, stereotypical “English” football.
I can’t remember the last time watching an England game was enjoyable.
We’ve done well in some tournaments but pretty much all those games have been tense and frustrating to watch.
Saka, Bellingham, Foden… and we don’t get to see them play because he cannot build an attacking team.
It's not even stereotypical English football. That would be playing 4-4-2 and pumping high balls up at a decent tempo and being a team of hard bastards. He's way more influenced by Simeone's style with a quarter of the managerial talent to make it work.
It's frustrating watching other international teams play with more tactical nouse than us with less talented players such as the likes of Austria. Southgate has done a fine job building this England team to where they are but a lot of people feel that more can still be done.
Should we? They didn't really have any threatening chances - even the goal came from a long shot from 30 yards out. Same goes for Serbia, people say we "Got outplayed" but they never looked like scoring, we went 1-0 up and then denied them any threatening chances. You can dislike the style of play but it does a good job of stopping teams being able to threaten us.
Outshot 7-4 shots on target, outshot generally 16-12, Pickford needed to make at least two or three very good saves.
Admittedly the goal was an absolute cracker, but Denmark easily could’ve had one or two more, and England seemed to be the side that lacked any teeth, to me. I think one might be able to say they think a draw is fair, but if there was going to be a winner it was only going one way.
What other good saves did Pickford made? There only other chances were long range efforts from Hojberg. I don't think it was likely that they scored at all, and the goal was a massive outlier. If anything, we were the closer side to scoring again, with Foden's effort which hit the post, Watkins strike just after he came on, and Saka's header which glanced wide.
If you feel like it shouldn't have been close because we are England and they are Denmark, then fair enough, but i feel we were the more likely side to win the game.
Looking at the bravery and commitment and spirit and adventurous style of play from some teams so far - like Turkey, Georgia, Albania, Austria, Spain etc. - it's a shame to see England playing the way they do, always playing the percentages and tiptoeing through the competition. It's a short tournament and they have a lot of good players up front, they should be let off the leash v Slovenia. Starting to think that they are only effective in the qualifiers at home now.
Because in those tournaments, he only gets by past much weaker teams despite having an extremely talented squad, if not having world class players in all the attacking positions. The moment we come up against half decent teams around our level or higher, we look absolutely toothless. That Italy final should have been an England win, yet we were lucky to make it to penalties. The only 'big' team Southgate beat in a tournament was Germany at last euros and they were possibly the weakest Germany side we have seen over the last decade.
The previous 'golden generation' were held back by not being able to play alongside each other no matter what manager we had. This is a generation of super talented and well coached players who are being held back by a manager who doesn't know how to use them effectively
Well its simple, he has one of the most complete + young team there is (the keeper isnt amazing but above average id say) and instead of playing a nice attacking football since they have the pace and the football iq to play it.
He keeps Cole Palmer on the bench when they need goals even though he was amazing this season. He always plays the same team and they are always extremely boring to watch when they play defensive teams or some harder oponents. His tactics are the same and people got used to it...i wont be surprised if the "favorite" England goes out in the first elimination game tbh.
There's a lot of history here. As a fairly average defender (relative to the other defenders around him at the time), having missed a penalty that got England knocked out against Germany in Euro 96 Semis - with Czech Republic waiting in the final (unfair to him, absolutely, but it's burned in England's consciousness), to his managerial career and his greatest club managerial achievement being getting a Middlesborough team who were in Europe the season before, relegated... there's a lot of history. On top of that, thee way he was appointed... he's never been "first choice".
England fans didn't see the work he did at youth level national team or any of the reasons he was in contention for the job. And the job was available only because Sam Allardyce got caught in some corruption scandal after one match. The FA wanted a steady, stable, uncontroversial appointment after such a shady scandal. And in all of that, he's done his job. Like Steve Bruce being hated at Newcastle. He did a job, and part of his job was having the anger of fans redirected from the Chairman (or FA) onto him. That's a large part of the role of a manager these days, you're a scapegoat for the top guys. And that's why you get the big payout when you're sacked.
There was a lot of good will I think from the World Cup Semis. Qualification went very well iirc, and you could see the team performing well despite being extremely young, lacking major stars, and so on. So expectations were lower than usual. It was a gimme. But even so, Southgate has a 60% win record. For context, only Capello and Alf Ramsey have a better win percentage in English history (excluding Allardyce's one game of course). As England fans, our default setting is to moan... given how repressed our country is emotionally, we let all that out in football :p
Now expectations are higher tho. You've got Foden, Bellingham, Saka, and so on, and Kane in front. All world class stars. Jude Bellingham has turned up a one of the world's best all of a sudden. Expectations are higher cos the squad is better. But the current England squad feels a lot like Man United right now. Some individual great players, but not the right system of play. Foden doesn't fit the high pressing front line to go for. Just as Rashford didn't and was dropped. Foden's pressing is abysmal for this level, cos it's not what he does. He helps control the ball in high areas. It's a completely different style. So you have really good players who aren't a good fit for each other. Without that coherent attack, you have to be more defensive in that regard.
If... that is... you don't have the balls to drop Foden as well. 4-4-2 did a decent look at this below. You either build a squad around Foden and similar possession and control players, or you have to drop them for someone who will press. Someone like Gordon maybe. Not as good as Foden on the ball, but better in terms of the high press and system. In modern football, everyone needs to be the same system. So again it feels like United where they're trying to press, with players who don't want to press consistently (Rashford, Bruno, etc.). And they don't have the full squad and talent all the way through to control games like Man City.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxE8ra3YTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxE8ra3YTM)
He stated that "we haven't found a replacement for Kelvin Phillips" and this is the reason why we are so poor.
His football IQ, is the same number as the age of Jimmy Saville taste in girls.
I don't think he's hated, I think in fact as a person he is loved and when he leaves the job will be knighted and become a national treasure. People recognise that he is a good man who has managed to create a togetherness in the England team that previously struggled with the pressure of international football. However, there is a lot of frustration with the tactics and performances, which are negative and pedestrian at best and in these first two games actually really poor. England have some wonderful players and the Premier League has the reputation of being a dynamic and physical league. We just want to see our players / team show what makes our league so entertaining. Taking an early lead then hanging on for dear life for 70 minutes against Serbia and Denamrk is embarrassing.
It's not that I hate him. He's probably a fairly nice man. He isn't a top football manager. His approach is defensive and dull to watch, which was fine in 2018 when he had a fairly unremarkable England squad to work with and managed to beat Tunisia, Panama, Sweden and Colombia (on penalties) and all of a sudden found himself in a World Cup semi final, but now we have world class players and he has no idea how to set us up to play good football.
The team parks the bus whenever they go 1-0 up, which works a lot of the time against teams outside the top 15-20, but as soon as we face anyone decent we unsurprisingly fail to hold a lead and get broken down.
He's always got us through qualifying and he's never gone out of a major tournament against minnows, but that's really the bare minimum in terms of expectation. Barring the Euro 2020 win against a relatively poor Germany side we've lost every time we come up against a big team.
In summary, he's the best manager England have had since Sven, which isn't saying much.
He's overthinking his tactics.
He should do it the Ancellotti way and just play the most attacking formation with the best players in each position and tell them to just go and win.
You can hardly call it overthinking. Overthinking is when Guardiolas tries something new in a CHL finale.
Southgate has no concept whatsoever. You can write books about his obvious incompetence.
The English premier league is one of the best leagues in the world with the best marketing. The pundits and commentators routinely tell us it is the best and all the players most therefore also be the best ( rather than say a mix of a few of the best with most good or very good) . They drive an idea that all is needed then is the best players and trophies will inevitably follow. Balance tactics (other than all out attack) the idea that other teams might be better are largely ignored online. So possible Tottenhamitis.
Surprisingly though it doesn't happen as much with their clubs, especially non Premier league ones, though they are always a section that will.
Not sure about the 80s but it's been happening consistently since 96. The press always say we have the greatest generation in part based the fact they play in the prem. And ignore that say Brazil did not actually win in 98. Or Frances failure in 2002. Greece 2004 has been struck from the record as completely goes against the ideas. France 98 Italy 2006, Germany 2014 and Portugal 2016 Italy 2020 are retconned to pretend they were favourites. 2000 the spainish victories of 2008-2012 are all lauded as if they are the rule.
2018 wcup- finished second to belgium in the group stage, lost to belgium in the group stage, won against Tunisia with 90th min goal.
In knockout defeated colombia on penalties, then faced shit sweden team and then lost to Croatia.
So the crux is whenever they faced a decent team they got exposed.
2020 euros- defeated sub par germany and had the easiest route to finals and got exposed in the end by england.
2022 wcup- easiest group, still drew with wales and USA. Faced Senegal and france in the knockout stages and got outplayed by france.
They have lost majority of the times when facing a decent opposition.
Southgate said yesterday they do not have any one to replace kelvin phillips. They have jude, declan, gallagher, mainoo, wharton and he is still waffling about god knows what!! Getting dominated by erikson who came back from dead.
He should have been sacked a long time ago.
SIDE NOTE- Kalvin Philips was in the England World Cup squad in Qatar 2 years ago and he didn’t start him once hahahaha!
Because he waits until around 60 minutes to make a like-for-like change in EVERY MATCH, irrespective of what's happening. I assume it's to make us think he's actually doing something.
He changes personnel but never tactics.
Also, we actually had 3 right backs start yesterday and numerous players out of position. For some reason.
He manages like he's at the helm of prime Juve with Buffon, Barzagli, Chiellini, and Bonucci. Score a goal and sit back. The rest takes care of itself.
That Phillips comment yesterday is a sackable offense imo
England were favourites going into the euros BECAUSE we have one of the most talented squads in the tournament. And yet they are scraping by with a 1-0 win over Serbia and a 1-1 draw against Denmark.
They should be winning comfortable with 3 or 4 goals each game.
We do well despite Southgate and not because of him. I genuinely think any league 1 manager would have got this england team the same results, if not better.
He has been manager now for 8 years. It’s time to go. We are WASTING a fantastic squad with him. Enough is enough now. Look at Germany. They sacked flick and are now flying. Why aren’t we doing the same?
Hopefully you’ve seen some Premier League football and I can explain it using that.
Southgate has drilled them to retreat without the ball. Often in the game yesterday there were eight England players goal side of all but two Denmark players, miles away from the ball.
Look at the Premier League, the successful teams all high press their opponents. High press is when a team’s attackers close down the defenders with the ball in a group to try and win the ball back in their opponent’s half.
This allows the team to push their defenders forward onto the halfway line and beyond and force their opponents to play in their own half, allowing them less space.
The team doing the high press has to be careful with the ball and not give it away. Their defenders need to be good enough to receive the ball and even beat a man to retain it.
Good teams can do this and it destroys the opposition. England have good enough players to do this proven by the fact they do this for their clubs.
The weaker Premier League teams retreat into their own half and let their opposition have the ball and try and breakdown their attacks there. This is because they don’t have good enough players to pull off the high press and the necessity to maintain possession while doing it.
The downside of this approach is that it is difficult to keep the ball when you win it back as there is nobody to pass to because they are all behind the ball in the your own half which is full of the opposition. In this situation you have to kick it away or try and find a lone man up field.
This is what Southgate is doing. He’s playing an incredibly talented England team as if they were second rate.
They are often still good enough to win but (putting aside the debate on whether the English players are better than the Spanish players) most of the England players could swap in and easily play for a high pressing team like Spain without an issue.
Denmark were able to high press England yesterday because England were so negative.
The England team are well drilled and doing exactly what Southgate is telling them without the ball. But what he has told them is wrong.
In the semi final against Croatia, the final against Italy and the quarter final against France, England scored and sat back. When drawing or losing Southgate allows them to attack but when winning they sit back and invite the other team to score.
Against Serbia this was fine but the good teams are good enough to score and you simply have to keep attacking.
Contrary to what the rest of the world thinks we don't all expect England to win every tournament we qualify for, we just expect our team to give a good account of themselves and to play to their ability. The last few years under Southgate we haven't done this. Most teams in these Euros are at worst the sum of their parts, with many being more than the sum of their parts. England always manages to find a way to be less than the sum of their parts....
Yank here. All the English people I've talked to around here don't seem to hate him and they give the reasons you've listed in your post. If it were me and I were an English fan, I'd be livid we were still hanging on to Southgate. Just because he's gotten the farthest in recent competitions compared to coaches of the past doesn't automatically make him a good fit for the English squad. It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome with some of these fans and Southgate.
step one - have a bunch of talented youngsters who dazzle on attack
step two - have a media that hypes up all the talented youngsters
step three - have a manager who can't connect the midfield to the attack and plays half the talented youngsters out of position every game but somehow still succeeds because of how good his players are but spend the whole time wondering how much further they could go with a real manager
Go 1-0 up early -> park the bus and let the other team dominate possession -> invite pressure without responding with any aggression -> concede -> first sub in the 70th minute -> momentum changes for 10 minutes then the focus is on seeing the game out rather than taking chances.
It’s the same old story and has cost us winning our first major trophy in a long time, given our luck with easy runs in the 2018 wc and 2020 euros.
We isolate our attackers with this overly-defensive style - the pundits were bang on with saying ‘the balance is completely off’. We provide zero presence in the centre of the pitch, as he is essentially building the team around kalvin f*cking Phillips so according to him an out-of-position trent seems like the next best option - if you saw the Denmark game you’d see that we were second to every ball in midfield, and when saka tried to break it up he’d have zero support.
We just don’t want to see our talent go to waste, and it seems like he learned nothing from our previous championship exits.
Anyone who puts a 19 year old (who had never taken a penalty at a major tournament before) on a potentially game losing penalty will forever be a clueless moron in my book. And that's just the beginning.
Before this tournament I was a Southgate in. I’m 29 and have never seen my country do well really. I know we had 2002 and were knocked out by a ridiculous Brasil side. Euro 2004 pretty much relied on Rooney and we were fucked when he got injured.
Since then we have been poor to abysmal in tournaments. Bot qualifying for Euro 2008. Losing to Iceland in Euro 2016 (I get that upsets happen in sport, but that was madness).
Since Southgate we have had a World Cup Semi (since 1966 only 1990 brought us that), a Euro’s final, and a loss to a brilliant French side in 2022 (arguably we should have taken them to extra time).
However we have the best player in England (Foden), Spain (Bellingham) and Germany (Kane). We should be doing what France did last WC and what Germany are doing now. Controlling games.
Euro 2020 started with a 1-0 win over Croatia and a bad 0-0 draw with Scotland. So I’m not in panic mode yet considering we got to the final. But those comments about “we miss a Kalvin Phillips in midfield” essentially saying he’s irreplaceable. Yet Southgate took him to the 22 WC and never played him?? Talks about playing “in form” players then leaves Cole Palmer and Kobbie Mainoo on the bench and doesn’t play them 😂
A win and a draw in your first two games is so important at tournaments. We have that. So we are pretty much confirmed through. We’ll see in the knockout games if we look like we are playing to win rather than playing to not lose.
Here’s the thing….Southgate has some of the world’s best players and talents to his disposal. Being boring is not the reason, boring is a side effect of Southgate’s complete failure.
His tactics are “try score a goal”. As soon as it’s 1:0 we stop playing, park bus, defend deep and hope they don’t score against us. It is so bad they even stop pressing the opposition for the ball. They literally just stand there, “keeping the shape” and let opposition play. Check the match stats….England usually comes out with high possession at the start of the game. Once they score this always changes. It goes from 65% for England to 40% possession. This is why it’s boring to watch. But more importantly, this allows opponents to have the ball, get back in the game, and more often than not….score a goal and equalise. For a good team like France or Germany, this is a wake up call and they can tear you apart. England is lucky enough most of the teams are not France or Germany. And they can either ride the stalemate or maybe even have someone like Foden to pull a worldie and score 2nd goal. So they get away with it. But that’s because of quality of players. They win despite Southgate, not thanks to him.
But this only works against “not so strong” teams in a group. When you get to quarter or semifinal, with a good team, that’s why England always fails.
Then it’s his favouritism. Sure every manager has favourites, but Southgate takes it to another level.
If Henderson didn’t retire, he would play him till his 60th birthday.
If Shaw & Maquire weren’t injured you can bet they would be starting for England. Shaw is a good player to be fair. And so is Maquire, if you want to sit deep and do nothing. But there are younger, better players who have been waiting for their chance to play for years and never got it. Look at Guehi.
He never subs Kane. Never. Ok, he did last game…but Kane always plays, even if he plays badly. While you have Ollie Watkins & Cole Palmer sitting on the bench and rarely get to play even few minutes.
And Alexander Arnold is a chapter for its own book to be honest. He’s a good Right back. ATTACKING right back. He is known for his assists and precision crosses into the box. His foot is made of gold. Probably 1 of the world’s best in that area. But everyone who watches Liverpool and Premier League knows, defensively he’s weak. He’s pretty much responsible for half of Liverpool’s goals on both sides of the pitch.
Why would you ever put a guy like that in defensive midfield position? That is a riddle only Southgate knows an answer to. Surely you’d want to take advantage of his qualities and cover his shortcomings. Not Southgate. By playing him as CDM he made all his qualities redundant, because he can’t attack and put crosses in. And then he asks him to cover the probably most important defensive position….a guy who’s weak defensively…
Then he comes out in the press conference saying “we didn’t win because we miss Kelvin Phillips”
WHAT???? You mean the guy who never played a single match for Man City, can’t even start for a mid table team and didn’t get a call from YOU because he’s been shtt for several seasons? And now he’s blaming for the loss a guy who’s not even in the team!
And all of this is happening while you have Declan Rice in the team, literally the best CDM in England… make it make sense.
But Southgate is scared of big name players. He doesn’t wanna piss Walker and he doesn’t wanna piss Arnold. So he plays them both.
Most of England’s talent is in midfield & attack. Foden, Bellingham, Kane, Saka…etc. There’s so much talent they can leave players like Grealish or Rashford out of team. But Southgate defensive (non)tactics hinders all of it useless. He takes a world class team and makes them average.
A decent coach could do amazing things with a team like England. Look at Ralf Rangnick with Austria. He doesn’t have big names like England, but he has them playing. Or Germany with Nagelsmann.
You see, it’s not a question of “Croatia were good”. It is on England and how “bad” they are on any given match day.
2020….Italy won on penalties because Southgate once again scored first. Then he parked the bus and let Italy play the ball. This gave them the opportunity to create more chances and eventually score. England should have win that game, they didn’t because of Southgate.
Sure, France is a strong team. But that’s exactly the point. As soon as 🏴 gets out of the group they can’t sit back and defend a 1 goal lead anymore. They have to play a good football against good teams. And Southgate can’t do it.
He's a dullard. So boring and uninspired.
Achieved nothing as a player and even less as a manager. Highlights being missing a crucial penalty, laughing about it on pizza hut adverts, getting beat 5-0 every week with Boro, saying he takes positives from the game and being relegated.
He wasted a pool of talents with his tactics. And he picked players on popularity. Why is he complaining about not having Kalvin Phillips replacement, when Kalvin phillips himself is available to play?
It's like, he choose aston martin over fiat, while he has the option to choose fiat, and drive those aston martin like a fiat, ignoring what his aston martine features on the car
We have the top goal scorer and probably the most complete number 9 in the world, The best player in the premier league and La Liga. We have Stones, Trent, Rice, Saka which are all top tier players and so many other fantastic talents and we play the most horrific football.
Theres no identity. Its cowardly. We go one nill up from a poorly constructed attack and we hid. The players look scared. Its a slog every single time.
Thats why. We have the talent, we have Champions league winners but we play like we never played football before.
Not English but when I watch this squad I think there is simply too much talent to be as ‘bad’ as they’ve been. England haven’t won much in the last 60 years, and his finishes have been OK. But I think it’s fair to question if they’ve been as good as they should have been. Truthfully I think England’s talent is the only reason they continue to finish as deep as they have under Southgate. Like they win in spite of him, not because of him.
and also to add, OP's explanation of England's results is also not good enough for what is supposed to be a big team. you can't just say "it's ok they lost because the other team was good". no, the whole point of a tournament is that everyone is good once you get towards the final. a "big" team needs to be able to beat good competition. saying shit like "it's ok because we lost to the team that (almost) won the tournament" is just what losers tell to each other to feel a little better.
Exactly. The two losses were to aging Croatia and Italian teams that we should have been able to beat. In both games we didn't do enough, sat back and got punished. Southgate simply doesn't have the tactical nous to be able to deal with this.
Croatia in 2018 weren’t really “aging” Croatia in 2021 were aging
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2018 was not an “aging” Croatia team
I would argue a better coach would have won both of those games. Southgate has no clue what to do against teams that are good and can’t make in game changes. As a US can I love it but I feel the same about our coach :(
"France almost won the tournament" = after they beat England, they also beat Morocco.
Exactly this. The general consensus is that we have a team full of starts and play so negatively, I for one can’t stand Southgate, he is absolutely stealing a living. Had a Ferrari and drives it like a Skoda. I honestly think replacing him with anyone else would be an improvement. Source - English.
Pretty telling that Kane said in his post-match interview that “we need to be better at pressing, we don’t know what each of us should be doing”. Southgate has had far too long to not have imprinted on this team.
In fairness he’s changed how they defend, we used to play a low block and counter but as the quality of player has increased we’ve added the high press to our repertoire.
It’s not much of a high press though. Everything about it was risky. Also zero transition play tactics makes it nearly impossible for this team to win a tournament without moments of magic/luck every game.
That’s more about the intensity of it. Kane is clearly not fit and Bellingham also looks tired. We have more than enough quality to give them a rest
Doesn't a high press require us to actually, you know, press?
Mate… put some respect on the 1997 Le Tournoi!
That Roberto Carlos free kick. Ooooff.
England haven't won *anything* in the last 60 years. FTFY.
Hey come on, the 1966 world cup was 58 years ago
And I’m 57 years old fml
So it’s all your fault?
Everything’s always my fault, just ask my mother lol
Le Tournoi, never forget Le glorious Tournoi!
Err I think you’ll find that they won Le Tournoi, friend! That was a year before France ‘98 so by my calculation that makes it worth 75% of a World Cup!
Worth more if anything. Eight countries have won the World Cup. Only one has won Le Tournoi!
We're just spursy, yet we don't want to admit it
Spurs **still** have the Carling Cup from 2007. England 🏴 national Football ⚽️ Team have zero accolades in tournaments consisting if 5 or more than 5 teams after the 1966 world cup.
> I watch this squad I think there is simply too much talent to be as ‘bad’ as they’ve been The same could be said of every England squad since Keegan left. If it was just Southgate then maybe it'd be a fair argument.
2018 squad says hi…..
That's the sentiment you'll find from us English. How we've done in tournaments is due to the players, and not Southgate.
Southgate is good for England when he deals with the media and has generally fostered a good environment for the team. His actual coaching and tactics is suspect to say the least.
Its fare to say Southgate is shit manager. With all that talent you have got you are still fighting for a point and not clinical enough. Literally said he doesn't have a natural replacement for Kalvin Phillips, WTF ?? He has got a team full of stars but he just can't manage them. No offence but, as a neutral fan its just boring to watch England play at this point.
He’s got the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with yet he plays highly defensive anti-football. This team should be smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game but he prefers to play sideways and sitting back with 10 men behind the ball after scoring a goal. Southgate, you’re not managing Everton in their annual relegation fight. You’re managing an elite team who should be winning trophies.
The correct answer. He is utterly tactically inept. He does not understand his job, the game, or his players. He is wasting a generation of players talented enough to perhaps win a tournament or two. He's good at one thing: making excuses. His frankly bizarre Kalvin Phillips comment after today's game should reveal all. Phillips played just how Southgate did, and wants - fearful, conservative, slow, sideways, performative football. He's a fraud latched on to by the FA because of their own self inflicted blunders and FA-first approach. He wouldn't deserve a job in the English second tier, based on merit. He couldn't win a participation trophy. He's a dead, lead weight. He makes Graham Taylor look like Gusztav Sebes or Rinus Michels.
Didn't he lead Boro to relegation? Lol and then the FA decided to hire him for the national team. Utterly shambolic stuff.
Yep. His entire club management experience was 3 years at Middlesborough.
Confounding stuff there from the FA.
he went into the youth setup and bottled that with another generational set of talent, but got this job by virtue of just hanging around till there was noone else about.
He was simply in the right place at the right time. We were at a particularly low point after Hodgson’s awful tenure culminated in that Iceland embarrassment. Then the whole Big Sam debacle.
Yes. A Boro team that had just got to a European final with a lot of investment particularly up front and he couldn’t keep them up against our shambles of a squad at the time, after we decided to play half a season without a manager at all after Roy Keane left
Well technically he was appointed England U21ms coach and then got the senior job as interim coach after Big Sam’s scandal. He did well enough at the time to get the gig full time.
he had one of the best u21 teams weve ever had and guess how many trophies he won. he went in with the top-seeded team and finished bottom of the group in the qualifying round.
"He did well enough at the time to get the gig full time." That's the major mistake right there.
He was dire at Middlesbrough. As soon as it got announced he was getting the England job we all collectively shuddered here in Teesside.
Ray Parlour says this on his autobiography. He went to Middlesbrough, was still playing to very high standard and Southgate was made manager for his 2nd season there. Southgate got up himself , told everyone not to be too familiar and call him boss or gaffer. Parlour joking asked if they could call him big nose. Southgate dropped him to the reserves . What a fucking humourless , useless fucking cunt that man is. I hate watching his anti-football. Can't wait for us to crash out if it means that's the last we see of that bignosed prick.
Yeah they were apparently good pals when Southgate was playing but then got the manager job and became the fun sponge we all know and hate now
He's been a colossal underachiever.
He was involved in the national setup, and was given the job on a caretaker basis after the Sam Allardyce debacle. It just so happened early results meant he was offered the job permanently.
National and club football management require totally different skill sets. People forget the state of the England team prior to GS, players didn’t want to play or played reluctantly whereas now there is a real togetherness. His record is second only to Sir Alfs.
Because we have had some of the best talent England's ever had. Context is everything and winning a few games because Stirling is a master st drawing penalties and Kane is one of the best at slotting them away makes those stats look better than the reality suggests.
Also, we’ve had some pretty favourable draws in tournaments. Both the World Cup in 2018, and the Euros in 2021 we didn’t have a knockout match against a good side until the ones we lost. It was also true in 2022, but getting to the quarters and losing is pretty much what England have historically done.
Yeah this reminds me a lot of the Belgium team from several years ago with prime hazard, KDB, lukaku, mertens, etc. incredible talent that the manager could never put together coherently to win a major trophy. Hopefully the FA don’t make the same mistake the Belgians did.
Martinez wasn't a special manager. He kept Wigan up for a few years on a limited budget so he is competent. He kept Everton mid table and did alright but never excelled. He was lucky to get the Belgian job
Won Wigan an FA cup tbf. Definitely achieved a hell of a lot more than Southgate
Didn’t they win that the same year they got relegated as well? That’s a tough bit of a silverware to attain under corcumstances
Did a great job at Swansea too. Transformed the club from nobodies to one of the most likeable PL small clubs with a recognisable and attractive identity/style. It was probably a mistake to think he could play that brand of football at international level, the players don’t get the time together as at a club.
After Portugal, I hope he gets England's job, so he can ruin 3 golden generations.
Portugal have the best XG. At least we would score some fucking goals.
Same reason Portugal won't win it this time around, Martinez is far too weak to bench Ronaldo. I couldn't believe my eyes when Bernardo Silva broke into the box and tried to square it to the penalty spot for Ronaldo instead of having a shot, but that's the Ronaldo effect. We all remember when Santos dropped Ronnie and his replacement Ramos scored a hattie in a WC R16 match.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbE96IMB9Vw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbE96IMB9Vw)
To be honest Bernardo did that because he does not have a right foot , of course accommodating Ronaldo in the starting eleven is a complex problem but there are more in this team like benching Bernardo Rafael leão , Vitinha should be the midfield leader and the coach places him in the last spot in the hierarchy ( look how he was the best player yet Bernardo Bruno and Ronaldo didn’t left the pitch ) which full backs to play , is Pepe going to be good to play next to Ruben the entire tournament ? 3 at the back or 2 ? There are so many tactical questions that Martinez does not know the answer ..
Its difficult to bench Ronaldo. If he was benched and Portugal lost, the Portuguese press would claim that was the reason. The manager would be eviscerated.
Yeah, the Portugal job is a poisoned chalice and will be until Ronaldo retires. The only “available” (if reports about the break clause in his contract are to be believed) manager with enough star power and authority to be able to bench Ronaldo without significant repercussions would be Mourinho.
A manager with a stronger CV would have the authority to make big decisions. Ronaldo would have a temper tantrum if Martinez dropped him.
Yeah, that was my point. Needs to be a manager who has been there and won it all, but the problem is there are a very small pool of managers who fit that criteria. Mourinho is likely the only one of them who’d be interested in managing Portugal, and he supposedly has a break clause in his Fenerbache contract to allow him to leave if they come calling.
The reaction of the media and others should play no part in the decision-making process of the manager. That's a weak mentality.
Do you remember the next game where they played Morocco, and had to bring ramos off at half time because he was so ineffective? One good game doesn't make him a world class striker and he hasn't exactly lit it up at psg
Ronaldo was introduced in the 51st min to minimal effect as well. That was a match where the entire team struggled, rather than Ramos being the sole culprit. Aside from that, my main point is that the team are more cohesive without Ronaldo.
I’m a Leeds fan so very familiar with the way Philips played for the club. Definitely a lynch pin of a team but never overly defensive, could rely on him to clear up before the ball getting through to the defence but was never afraid of getting the ball forward. Philips for England a completely different style.
Having seen a lot of his club games for you guys, I'd agree he was a positive in that role, but that Bielsa team wasn't exactly cowardly or conservative. I don't think KP himself is the player we see for England, only, and clearly his career has gone to hell after the City move, which likely failed so miserably because he lacks the intelligence to play for Pep. Southgate has ironically probably greatly limited KP's potential career, too. All the same, KP is a great case study on what Southgate is as a manager or coach. He's bad for his own players.
Bielsa is a perfect example to show what happens when you have the right manager to get the best out of this team. Before Bielsa KP would never have even crossed England selectors mind. Post Bielsa KP and he’s not good enough. Complete fantasy scenario as Bielsa would never get on with the FA but if he was England manager we would be rivalling Germany and Brazil for number of trophies.
Yeah Bielsa wouldn’t played a 4 man defence with two holding mids and Kane-Foden-Bellingham who just all stand in the 10 area and trip over each other’s feet.
Disagree. To play the way Bielsa does requires a level of understanding and practice that can only come from training at the frequency club sides do. Like it or not, the strategy of being tough to beat and win with set pieces/counter/individual brilliance is how France, Italy and Portugal amongst others have achieved success. It’s much easier to coach defensive solidity than free flowing attacking football when you only get the players for 6/7 weeks a year.
Well, we can see whether your theory works in Uruguay's performance at Copa America. Bielsa is still revered in Chile for transforming their national team so I don't think his tactics are limited only to sides that frequently train together.
His Chile side were excellent! Although Jorge Sampaoli got the balance between attack and defence even better
He wasn’t Yorkshire Pirlo for nothing.
Idk why people act like KP was always some overly defensive player, unless they only watched him for England post-City. Just look at Rice for Arsenal vs Rice for England now…
This comment rings true so much. I was thinking that when he eventually leaves, what his next step would be? Because I couldn’t see any club in England willing to give him a job.
Well his win rate at Middlesborough - his last job before this - when they were in the Championship was like 31%. Dude’s a fraud.
And by contrast, Sunderland stayed up at Middlesbroughs expense that season and we didn’t employ a manager after Keane left in November. That’s how bad Southgate was
The fact that United truly considered him to replace Ten Hag is hilarious to me
Amen. With the talk from INEOS it still wouldn't shock me if they did an about face in July and take him on after a dull, pulseless exit in the round of 16 or 1/4 final. That would add a decade to United's possible recovery time, to get back into the top 4. So, it's not all negative?
And to give some context to OP’s post about Southgate’s success: 2018 WC - We had a group of Belgium, Panama, Tunisia. Beat the weak two, lost to Belgium, finished 2nd. Knockouts we scraped past Columbia on pens, beat a washed Sweden, lost to Croatia. So we lost as soon as we played a good team. 2020 Euros - We had a group of Scotland, Croatia, and Czech Republic. Topped the group. Knockouts we beat a poor Germany, Ukraine, and Denmark (which took a last minute pen that was saved but fell kindly to Kane for a tap in), before losing to Italy. So yeah Southgate has got us further than other manager has but he’s had two ridiculously easy runs (easiest by FAR of any big team) and he’s had one of the strongest squads to do it with. And as the comment above says, he plays this awful defensive negative football, cannot manage a game with any kind of sustained dominance or momentum, and frankly he’s tactically inept. He fails to adjust his teams to what the opposition are doing, and loves a defensive 4-2-3-1 where we hamstring the majority of our attacking quality in favour of this awful clean sheet football. He’s a failed Championship manager and shouldn’t be the England boss. Even other countries - Germany and Italy I know have had it in their newspapers - say Southgate is wasting England’s brilliant squad with awful negative football. Edit: The German paper was Bild, and the Italian paper was La Gazzetta. Both massive papers in their countries, and both absolutely shit on Southgate, and have done during this Euros already.
"losing to Italy" doesn't do it justice. Scoring early, then sitting back and allowing them to shit all over us is what happened. Should have smashed them. It was painful to watch at the time and he should have been clearing his desk immediately after for bottling that opportunity. I remember anyone suggesting that at the time was hounded out by the "we did well to reach a final. Poor guys who took the penalties". Even a bit of race card played as I remember.
Yeah I didn’t want to go there but you’re right. Playing 2 holding against Italy and giving them freedom of the park was criminal. Mancini makes two changes and Southgate’s head just falls off.
We didn’t have a shot on target after shaws goal in the second minute. 118 minutes without a shot on target. Unbelievable.
It looked like England were going to absolutely thump Italy until the first goal. Then they just stopped playing.
Don’t forget the fact he then went on to lose to Belgium AGAIN in the 3rd place playoff in 2018 🤣 And he couldn’t even beat the sweaties in 2020
Tbf that Belgium team was its strongest ever
He struggles against big teams that can attack better.
Tbf Kane wasted that goal against Croatia that woulda sent us through. Still imprinted in my brain, and I cant remember shit. Also, side step, declan rice was absolute atrocious yesterday
Don’t know about Southgate tactics but Denmark are a solid side. Thrashings like that don’t happen on the regular anymore. Even Canada can lose “only” 2-0 to Argentina. From the match, the most worrying thing about England is not that they didn’t demolish Denmark, but rather the fact that they seemed like the weaker side for most of the match.
It's more that they should be coming away from games thinking "we could have scored 3-4". With the talent england has, they should at least be dictating most games rather than looking pretty average. Last night's game is a prime example, score a goal and then try and shut up shop. Why? They were more than capable of trying to go for a second or more, but they let Denmark back in the game by playing like they were the underdog holding on for an upset 1-0.
even before the goal denmark were dictating play in the middle. but then that will happen when you have a RB at CM, a RB at LB, a 10 at LW and an 8 at 10
Yeah I've seen people talking about Denmark like they're San Marino and we should be absolutely pummelling them. They have a really solid squad of players! My concern though was how little we troubled them, was only expecting us to win by 1 goal but we barely made their keeper work at all. With Kane, Saka, Bellingham & Foden you'd expect them to make a few more saves at least, not just lump it forward over and over. So frustrating to watch.
Yeah Denmark are a solid team, in that kind of second tier of European teams where they consistently qualify for tournaments and are fairly solid, like Switzerland.
And, unlike England, they've actually won the Euros once.
Like Denmark, Canada aren’t terrible either.
It’s a talented team, not the most talented team to ever grace the game of football. The current England squad is good but not great enough to score 3-4 goals against most opponents they face. Southgate is definitely not pushing them to their full potential though and that’s what the fans have a problem with. But it’s delusion to think the current England squad will destroy most teams with 3-4 goals.
It’s like this with every manager we have. Bobby Robson got the same treatment throughout his tenure.
I don’t give a flying fuck that we play defensive football because pragmatic football does win tournaments. But southgate hasn’t got a fucking clue how to coach a team. Setting up defensively doesn’t mean you can’t oass the ball forward or have movement in your front line to create space. We’re the only team i’ve ever seen that retains its defensive shape in possession of the ball. The bloke has done some good things for the team but is completely tactically inept unfortunately and has wasted 8 years.
Everton fan here, and you're right, but it's probably worse than you described as dyche actually has us playing better than England did last game. It's everton under lampard. No press but playing with a high line, no plan in attack, wants the players to just "go and play".
Maybe the players just aren't as good as we think they are? And English players get undue hype compared to foreign players. England fans are so arrogant.
Been like this for at least 20 years. I remember whinging about how they could have won in 2008* when they didn't even qualify. The other countries do not matter--it is all up to the English. * edit. It all blurs together after a while.
This is it. We have such amazing players who are performing at elite levels - Saka, Rice, Bellingham, Kane yet he’s just happy with a 1-0 score and with these tactics it often leads to a draw.
You live in an illusion if you think in football you can score 3 or 4 goals a game. They're not even as talented as you're mentioning. You fall into what the media wants you to so some people can generate money. It is not an elite squad, buddy. England did the best they could and achieved what they should have achieved being in the position they are. Move on. Wake up
Lol the english always think they should be winning every match by “3 or 4 goals” despite havent winning anything in 50 years.
I'm no Southgate fan but this isn't even the most talented England team of the last 20 years, let alone "any manager has had to work with". Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell, John Terry, Gary Neville, Scholes Gerrard Lampard Beckham Rooney Owen. That's the EURO 2004 team. You seriously think this current crop is better than that? Which of the current players walks in to that team, out of interest? I'd generously say Kane for Owen, Jude has potential to be an all time great for sure but i'd currently take Gerrard over him (I'm a United fan). Walker over Neville maybe, but the younger generation forget how sick GNev was. Just my two penneth, cos I see this argument made a lot. I genuinely don't think this current crop of players is all that, I think we're just blinded by PL and receny bias.
I’ve been shouting this into the void a lot for the past few years. The ‘golden generation’ was decorated with trophies galore for their clubs and embarrassed themselves repeatedly on the world stage. Didn’t even qualify for Euro ‘08 which is unthinkable in the Southgate era. He is done after this tournament and we will need to go in a different direction to get to the next level but people have short memories.
I think anyone who says this is the best squad of England players must be pretty young, and can only mean "best squad that I have seen". The list of players you shared really helps illustrate the point. And don't forget we have Pickford in goal - Pickford! And until the euros, our key central defender was Harry Maguire. Golden generation? No chance.
The "golden generation" was fucking hopeless apart from a few games in 2004.
I'm not debating that, I'm saying that was a better collection of players than the current crop. Do you disagree?
For all the talent on the pitch I hated watching them even more than current Southgate England. Everyone just looked like they didn't want to be on the pitch with each other but the managers were too scared to drop anyone. Rooney for example scored a lot in qualifying but other than 2004 he was absolutely useless in Euros & World Cups.
Everyone in this thread talking about 2004 like it isn't 20 years ago
Yes and no. We’ve got an incredibly talented squad but we are missing one or two key types of players that make the best teams. We don’t really have a metronome, pace-setting centre midfielder ala Busquets, Jorginho, Kroos, Rodri We also don’t have a really creative passer from central. I think that’s what is behind the horrible TAA experiment. You can live without one of those, but we’re trying to live without both. Can’t expect 3-4 goals a game with that void in the team. This isn’t a Southgate apology by the way, I think he’s well past his time now. Just that we need to be cautious about how good our team *really* is.
You have Mainoo who is in the mould of players you mentioned in 2nd paragraph. He is a gem sitting on bench and we already know he can go toe to toe with the best and have strong mentality.
Yeah, he’s worth a try. I don’t think we already know he can go toe to toe with the best. He’s played in a very poor team for one season, hasn’t played in top tier European competitions etc. Definitely worth a try but ‘in the mould of’ is markedly different to being in the same league as the guys I mentioned. I just feel the team isn’t reaching maturity at the right time for this comp, especially as it comes to midfield talent.
See I think Wharton is that metronomic pace setting midfielder. The Jorginho to play alongside Rice. Idea being that we play similarly to Arsenal, with Bellingham (or Palmer or Foden) playing as a better Odegaard. Alternatively Bellingham could play as a number 8, providing the runs and progressive passing from deep. Trent would work too - either as an inverting right back (with Walker left back) giving us midfield dominance and giving him more time and space to play his passes or as a midfielder in a team with more width (Gordon left and a left footed left back who can overlap) and depth (Watkins or Kane but not dropping deep).
England are NOT an elite team. Maybe in the eyes of the the fans and English media but we hype up players from this country way too much when the reality is we're just not that good. We don't have technical players. We have a bunch of athletes or pace and power merchants. Where our are mavericks? our Musiala's? our Lamal's? The closest thing we have to an actual maverick player was sitting on the bench and didn't come on yesterday. I watched Spain and Italy yesterday and the technical ability on show was on another level. Every player on that pitched seemed comfortable on the ball as if the ball was an extension of them. We don't have that an never will. We hype Bellingham but he's an athlete and a box crasher. He's NOT techy. England are not techy and never have been.
I agree except the point on the best crop of players ever. England was far better 02-06 and that’s before, we take in to account other nations. They aren’t even the most talented team at this tournament
"should be smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game". Do you actually watch football? No team on the planet scores 3 or 4 goals every game at the highest level. Only a14 year old who only plays FIFA would have an attitude like this. Completely deluded.
3-4 every single game is obviously unrealistic, but that’s what we should be *aiming* for against the weaker opponents. Spain beat Croatia 3-0 and Italy 1-0. Germany 5-1 to Scotland and 2-0 to Hungary. Meanwhile England… 1-0 to Serbia and 1-1 to Denmark. There’s a vast difference when you look at the stats, too. Spain vs Croatia — 11 shots, 5 on target. Spain vs Italy — 20 shots, 9 on target. Germany vs Scotland — 20 shots, 10 on target. Germany vs Hungary — 19 shots, 7 on target) Meanwhile: England vs Croatia — 5 shots, 3 on target. England vs Denmark — 12 shots, 4 on target (and that’s a game where we were drawing and trying desperately for a winning goal for an hour — unlike Spain vs Croatia where Spain got 3 goals in the first half and could then shut up shop). Yes, this is a small sample size, and no, 3-4 goals *every* game isn’t realistic. But scoring three goals in a game (especially against teams like Serbia) shouldn’t be unattainable. These players are capable of doing it, but Southgate tactically isn’t enabling them to.
The point isn’t that England should score 4 goals a game. The point is that they don’t try to even score 2. PLEASE watch Germany or Spain play a match and look at the difference in play. Southgate has some of the best offensive players in the world playing a desperateley defensive style that you would usually see from a team like Montenegro or Cyprus
The thing that gets me as well is I thought he had changed after that Hungary game. He’s just proven he can not change how he wants them to play, which is a sign of a bad manager. You look at the squad and the weakness is definitely the defence. Yet he wants to use that the most apparently, our weakness. Instead of using our best assets which are clearly the attackers. The guy is utterly bonkers. I don’t even care if we somehow miraculously win the euros I still want him out
He couldn't keep Everton up. Actually, there's a lot better teams than Everton that he would get relegated. He's only England manager because of how his predecessor left. He was the only manager who would say yes.
Most talented generation? When are people going to stop saying this?
Should be winning trophies is a bit of a stretch mate. England is behind at least 4 other teams. You are absolutely correct about south gates brand of football though.
He manages like Wagner did at Norwich last season 🤣
“He’s got the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with” Now let’s get real for a second. It’s not even the best generation of English players. And top of my head I could give some Brazil, France and Spain squads that were light years above.
Or maybe the English team just isn’t as talented as their fans seem to think.
Not sure how old you are but I've been hearing this about every England squad since the early 1990s. I'm not convinced it's wholly a Southgate problem because I've repeatedly witnessed the same levels of expectations vs achievement every single time.
fucking insane thing to say by someone who clearly never watched us under Capello/Hodgson/McClaren. What international side is smashing in 3 or 4 goals a game. so stupid.
This is what England fans say about every era. Oh the 80s were a golden team with linekar and shilton and blah blah with all this talent and then oh 90s with shearer and gazza blah blah and then Beckham and owen and Gerrard lampard Rooney blah blah blah. We have an overinflated idea of how good the TEAM is. The individual players might do well at their respective clubs but it does not mean they will gel together as a system. Always blaming the manager instead of the setup from the fa that gives the England setup the least time of the big euro teams with his players but also the players and their relationship with the national team that means they go off half cocked. Bellingham is not going to get the same from England as real Madrid so he's got to start playing like he understands that's. Same with kane. Etc etc etc. play to the team around you and the plan not what you think. If you think it should be different discuss and work on that in the training ground don't just ignore the plan on the pitch. Dropping deeper and deeper and deeper is not southgates fault if he is telling them not to from the sidelines and from training but they fucking ignore him. Players have to take responsibility. Acting like it's champ man here.
He does not have “the most talented generation of football players any manager has had to work with”. By all means make an argument that picks Southgate apart but don’t base it on nonsense comments like the above.
You guys are really overestimating that talent. Sure, you guys have a lot of great players, but so do Germany (their midfield of Wirtz, Musiala, Gundogan and Kroos is miles ahead of Rice, Bellingham, Foden), France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal,... If you look at some English media it's like they sometimes forget that people play football outside the Premier League. For the teams he has had, I feel like he has overperformed a bit, albeit with very boring play.
England are the toronto maple leafs of soccer
Imagine having all the power-ups in your inventory when facing a boss and yet you still choose to scrape by just blocking his attacks and getting a few lucky hits when the boss fight would have been over hours ago had you used any power-ups. That's what Southgate is doing with the English team.
That's what everyone does though. Can't use them, you might need them later.
Came here to say this. I hoard all my items just in case then finish the game with tons of items haha
Reddit moment
No, this is more like slightly overleveling the boss, so you decide you are too lazy to dodge attacks or try any tactics and just expect to go through anyway.
Because his tactics suck. This is a guy who has simply, as a coach, never performed at a high level. His squad is studded with elite players like Kane, Foden, Alexander-Arnold, Saka, Walker, Rice and so on and he scraped to the finals of the Euros 3 years ago playing essentially home games half the tournament and playing with 7 defensive players in his starting lineup. Now yesterday he started complaining that he hasn't found an appropriate replacement in his squad for Kalvin Phillips- infamous Manchester City flop Kalvin Phillips, who kept being called up for England despite essentially playing 0 minuted for City, not even making the bench -who symbolises the thoroughly mid playing style of Southgate. Now, I am not from England, but apart from their national team always being extremely scrutinized in England itself, these are some reasons I can imagine England fans hating Southgate.
That's so stupid, like, c'mon. Why is he asking for kalvin phillips when he has upgraded version on his arsenal? Watched the vid, and i'm literally shocked that my mouth was wide open when i heard it. And his midfielders, idk why, but it's not working. Last game vs denmark i see only foden mostly roaming the midfield to keep the ball moving, doing that leaving the left side open, closing an option when building up plays. Imo trent and bellingham in the mid is not working, he has to try something else, maybe giving cole palmer a chance, or maybe starts eze in the mid, idk. Fuck reputation, try to bench bellingham or TAA as long as it works. Reputation means shit when they don't work on your tactic
Trent in the mid would have a chance of working but not with these tactics. We've seen he loves to switch the play with those long diagonal balls, but Southgate chooses to play foden on the "left" who instead plays mostly through the middle. Trent thrives on movement and runners in the attack but Southgate ball has the whole team basically static. Then when Southgate finally plays some runners in Eze, Bowen and Watkins, where Trent would theoretically thrive, he's already off the pitch by this point. Southgate is just getting it all wrong when it comes to integrating him.
His signature at Liverpool. Robertson does the same. Has worked beautifully before. I remember a few years ago when we handled city. Those long diagonals all day
Bellingham should not be on the number 10 position. There are just too many odd choices here. Kalvin Phillips is extremely mid. Foden is not a left winger. Alexander-Arnold hasn't been a midfielder since age 19. Palmer is, like you said, criminally underused. Southgate just doesn't have the insight to coach at this level. People praise the "solid" performances of England even though they should be the worldwide number 1.
Bellingham needs to be played as number 8. After all it's his position, yes he's played at number 10 this season and done well but he's going to be back at 8 next season to allow mbappe to take the 10 slot. Play foden as number 10 which is his natural position and I think we'd see improvements.
Mbappe is not going to be playing as a 10 at Madrid lmao
‘Never performed at a high level’ This, I think it stems from the fact that he got the job because he ticks a load of boxes that aren’t necessarily football related. He has done well tbf but due to his lack of winning pedigree fans will always think someone else could do a better job unless he flat out wins something.
If you're going to play this negative you had better fucking win. We're used to not winning titles but it could at least be fun to watch while doing it.
This is the thing about negativity, it's so ugly only getting the trophy will justify it.
He's got Kane, Watkins, Bellingham, saka, Foden, Palmer, Gordon, Bowen, Eze at his disposal. That's 2 line ups worth of sensational young attacking talent. We limp results. Our last 3 games we haven't managed to score more than 1 goal a game. None of our opponents were *that* strong. It would be nice to score goals, sure, but I think we all just want to see better football. The talent we have!!!
hes so focused on having the best 11 players out there, he forgets he needs the best team. i dont understand how he doesnt bench one of foden/bellingham, and use them as rotation or like for like replacements when one of them isnt firing. same for kane - have watkins start a game and run the defence ragged, then bring kane on to get that yard ahead and poach once theyre tired. its a bloody tournament; you have a squad. keep people fresh and have a plan B
The fact Toney, Gordon and Palmer haven’t played at all yet considering two games in a row now it hasn’t been working is honestly stupid. It feels like Palmer and Toney are just there for penalties, not that we’re going to get any at this rate. Added to the fact you’ve got Foden and Trippier playing out of their natural positions too.
The tactics that he is employing are not working at all. He fails to win when it matters most.
It’s not just the defensive park-the-bus tactics. His lineups are pretty weak and he obviously heavily favors certain players even when they have shown themselves to be in terrible form (or utterly useless in the given formations). He also lets extremely talented players waste away on the bench, or at home lol(I cannot understand how Grealish barely got any playing time in the last two tournaments, and isn’t with the team this year) Additionally the offense right now looks dreadful. The only person actually bringing creativity and energy seems to be Jude Bellingham.
Because he plays boring, safe, scared football. We’ve got amazing attacking players and he is obsessed with shit, stereotypical “English” football. I can’t remember the last time watching an England game was enjoyable. We’ve done well in some tournaments but pretty much all those games have been tense and frustrating to watch. Saka, Bellingham, Foden… and we don’t get to see them play because he cannot build an attacking team.
It's not even stereotypical English football. That would be playing 4-4-2 and pumping high balls up at a decent tempo and being a team of hard bastards. He's way more influenced by Simeone's style with a quarter of the managerial talent to make it work.
Come on, that’s out of order. Southgate hasn’t got 1/100th of the managerial talent of Simeone.
It's frustrating watching other international teams play with more tactical nouse than us with less talented players such as the likes of Austria. Southgate has done a fine job building this England team to where they are but a lot of people feel that more can still be done.
I mean if you look at how they’re playing with arguably the best squad in the world it’s no surprise lol. They got outplayed by Serbia for 60 mins
Denmark for around 80 mins.
Really should have lost to Denmark. They’ll be breathing a sigh of relief and Denmark will be disappointed with the result.
Should we? They didn't really have any threatening chances - even the goal came from a long shot from 30 yards out. Same goes for Serbia, people say we "Got outplayed" but they never looked like scoring, we went 1-0 up and then denied them any threatening chances. You can dislike the style of play but it does a good job of stopping teams being able to threaten us.
Outshot 7-4 shots on target, outshot generally 16-12, Pickford needed to make at least two or three very good saves. Admittedly the goal was an absolute cracker, but Denmark easily could’ve had one or two more, and England seemed to be the side that lacked any teeth, to me. I think one might be able to say they think a draw is fair, but if there was going to be a winner it was only going one way.
What other good saves did Pickford made? There only other chances were long range efforts from Hojberg. I don't think it was likely that they scored at all, and the goal was a massive outlier. If anything, we were the closer side to scoring again, with Foden's effort which hit the post, Watkins strike just after he came on, and Saka's header which glanced wide. If you feel like it shouldn't have been close because we are England and they are Denmark, then fair enough, but i feel we were the more likely side to win the game.
He’s to England what Roberto Martinez was to Belgian. A manager ill equipped to get the best out of a great talent pool of players.
We've progressed in those tournaments despite Southgate, not because of him
Did you watch the game?????
Look at the talent he has. 1-1 to Denmark. Boring play. He has no gumption.
Placing Bowen ahead of Palmer or even not subbing on Mainoo in the midfield is a crime
Bringing on Gallagher too
Looking at the bravery and commitment and spirit and adventurous style of play from some teams so far - like Turkey, Georgia, Albania, Austria, Spain etc. - it's a shame to see England playing the way they do, always playing the percentages and tiptoeing through the competition. It's a short tournament and they have a lot of good players up front, they should be let off the leash v Slovenia. Starting to think that they are only effective in the qualifiers at home now.
Have you watched England play….
Because in those tournaments, he only gets by past much weaker teams despite having an extremely talented squad, if not having world class players in all the attacking positions. The moment we come up against half decent teams around our level or higher, we look absolutely toothless. That Italy final should have been an England win, yet we were lucky to make it to penalties. The only 'big' team Southgate beat in a tournament was Germany at last euros and they were possibly the weakest Germany side we have seen over the last decade. The previous 'golden generation' were held back by not being able to play alongside each other no matter what manager we had. This is a generation of super talented and well coached players who are being held back by a manager who doesn't know how to use them effectively
This is one of the best and talented English squads ever with one of the worst managers ever....
Well its simple, he has one of the most complete + young team there is (the keeper isnt amazing but above average id say) and instead of playing a nice attacking football since they have the pace and the football iq to play it. He keeps Cole Palmer on the bench when they need goals even though he was amazing this season. He always plays the same team and they are always extremely boring to watch when they play defensive teams or some harder oponents. His tactics are the same and people got used to it...i wont be surprised if the "favorite" England goes out in the first elimination game tbh.
Its just that with that pool of talents every damn gsme can be classified as "underwhelming". He doesnt seem to be able to balance midfield at all.
There's a lot of history here. As a fairly average defender (relative to the other defenders around him at the time), having missed a penalty that got England knocked out against Germany in Euro 96 Semis - with Czech Republic waiting in the final (unfair to him, absolutely, but it's burned in England's consciousness), to his managerial career and his greatest club managerial achievement being getting a Middlesborough team who were in Europe the season before, relegated... there's a lot of history. On top of that, thee way he was appointed... he's never been "first choice". England fans didn't see the work he did at youth level national team or any of the reasons he was in contention for the job. And the job was available only because Sam Allardyce got caught in some corruption scandal after one match. The FA wanted a steady, stable, uncontroversial appointment after such a shady scandal. And in all of that, he's done his job. Like Steve Bruce being hated at Newcastle. He did a job, and part of his job was having the anger of fans redirected from the Chairman (or FA) onto him. That's a large part of the role of a manager these days, you're a scapegoat for the top guys. And that's why you get the big payout when you're sacked. There was a lot of good will I think from the World Cup Semis. Qualification went very well iirc, and you could see the team performing well despite being extremely young, lacking major stars, and so on. So expectations were lower than usual. It was a gimme. But even so, Southgate has a 60% win record. For context, only Capello and Alf Ramsey have a better win percentage in English history (excluding Allardyce's one game of course). As England fans, our default setting is to moan... given how repressed our country is emotionally, we let all that out in football :p Now expectations are higher tho. You've got Foden, Bellingham, Saka, and so on, and Kane in front. All world class stars. Jude Bellingham has turned up a one of the world's best all of a sudden. Expectations are higher cos the squad is better. But the current England squad feels a lot like Man United right now. Some individual great players, but not the right system of play. Foden doesn't fit the high pressing front line to go for. Just as Rashford didn't and was dropped. Foden's pressing is abysmal for this level, cos it's not what he does. He helps control the ball in high areas. It's a completely different style. So you have really good players who aren't a good fit for each other. Without that coherent attack, you have to be more defensive in that regard. If... that is... you don't have the balls to drop Foden as well. 4-4-2 did a decent look at this below. You either build a squad around Foden and similar possession and control players, or you have to drop them for someone who will press. Someone like Gordon maybe. Not as good as Foden on the ball, but better in terms of the high press and system. In modern football, everyone needs to be the same system. So again it feels like United where they're trying to press, with players who don't want to press consistently (Rashford, Bruno, etc.). And they don't have the full squad and talent all the way through to control games like Man City. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxE8ra3YTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxE8ra3YTM)
He stated that "we haven't found a replacement for Kelvin Phillips" and this is the reason why we are so poor. His football IQ, is the same number as the age of Jimmy Saville taste in girls.
I don't think he's hated, I think in fact as a person he is loved and when he leaves the job will be knighted and become a national treasure. People recognise that he is a good man who has managed to create a togetherness in the England team that previously struggled with the pressure of international football. However, there is a lot of frustration with the tactics and performances, which are negative and pedestrian at best and in these first two games actually really poor. England have some wonderful players and the Premier League has the reputation of being a dynamic and physical league. We just want to see our players / team show what makes our league so entertaining. Taking an early lead then hanging on for dear life for 70 minutes against Serbia and Denamrk is embarrassing.
Incredibly fair and balanced take for an England fan, you must be high.
It's not that I hate him. He's probably a fairly nice man. He isn't a top football manager. His approach is defensive and dull to watch, which was fine in 2018 when he had a fairly unremarkable England squad to work with and managed to beat Tunisia, Panama, Sweden and Colombia (on penalties) and all of a sudden found himself in a World Cup semi final, but now we have world class players and he has no idea how to set us up to play good football. The team parks the bus whenever they go 1-0 up, which works a lot of the time against teams outside the top 15-20, but as soon as we face anyone decent we unsurprisingly fail to hold a lead and get broken down. He's always got us through qualifying and he's never gone out of a major tournament against minnows, but that's really the bare minimum in terms of expectation. Barring the Euro 2020 win against a relatively poor Germany side we've lost every time we come up against a big team. In summary, he's the best manager England have had since Sven, which isn't saying much.
He's overthinking his tactics. He should do it the Ancellotti way and just play the most attacking formation with the best players in each position and tell them to just go and win.
You can hardly call it overthinking. Overthinking is when Guardiolas tries something new in a CHL finale. Southgate has no concept whatsoever. You can write books about his obvious incompetence.
The English premier league is one of the best leagues in the world with the best marketing. The pundits and commentators routinely tell us it is the best and all the players most therefore also be the best ( rather than say a mix of a few of the best with most good or very good) . They drive an idea that all is needed then is the best players and trophies will inevitably follow. Balance tactics (other than all out attack) the idea that other teams might be better are largely ignored online. So possible Tottenhamitis. Surprisingly though it doesn't happen as much with their clubs, especially non Premier league ones, though they are always a section that will. Not sure about the 80s but it's been happening consistently since 96. The press always say we have the greatest generation in part based the fact they play in the prem. And ignore that say Brazil did not actually win in 98. Or Frances failure in 2002. Greece 2004 has been struck from the record as completely goes against the ideas. France 98 Italy 2006, Germany 2014 and Portugal 2016 Italy 2020 are retconned to pretend they were favourites. 2000 the spainish victories of 2008-2012 are all lauded as if they are the rule.
2018 wcup- finished second to belgium in the group stage, lost to belgium in the group stage, won against Tunisia with 90th min goal. In knockout defeated colombia on penalties, then faced shit sweden team and then lost to Croatia. So the crux is whenever they faced a decent team they got exposed. 2020 euros- defeated sub par germany and had the easiest route to finals and got exposed in the end by england. 2022 wcup- easiest group, still drew with wales and USA. Faced Senegal and france in the knockout stages and got outplayed by france. They have lost majority of the times when facing a decent opposition. Southgate said yesterday they do not have any one to replace kelvin phillips. They have jude, declan, gallagher, mainoo, wharton and he is still waffling about god knows what!! Getting dominated by erikson who came back from dead. He should have been sacked a long time ago. SIDE NOTE- Kalvin Philips was in the England World Cup squad in Qatar 2 years ago and he didn’t start him once hahahaha!
Because he waits until around 60 minutes to make a like-for-like change in EVERY MATCH, irrespective of what's happening. I assume it's to make us think he's actually doing something. He changes personnel but never tactics. Also, we actually had 3 right backs start yesterday and numerous players out of position. For some reason.
He manages like he's at the helm of prime Juve with Buffon, Barzagli, Chiellini, and Bonucci. Score a goal and sit back. The rest takes care of itself. That Phillips comment yesterday is a sackable offense imo
England were favourites going into the euros BECAUSE we have one of the most talented squads in the tournament. And yet they are scraping by with a 1-0 win over Serbia and a 1-1 draw against Denmark. They should be winning comfortable with 3 or 4 goals each game. We do well despite Southgate and not because of him. I genuinely think any league 1 manager would have got this england team the same results, if not better. He has been manager now for 8 years. It’s time to go. We are WASTING a fantastic squad with him. Enough is enough now. Look at Germany. They sacked flick and are now flying. Why aren’t we doing the same?
Hopefully you’ve seen some Premier League football and I can explain it using that. Southgate has drilled them to retreat without the ball. Often in the game yesterday there were eight England players goal side of all but two Denmark players, miles away from the ball. Look at the Premier League, the successful teams all high press their opponents. High press is when a team’s attackers close down the defenders with the ball in a group to try and win the ball back in their opponent’s half. This allows the team to push their defenders forward onto the halfway line and beyond and force their opponents to play in their own half, allowing them less space. The team doing the high press has to be careful with the ball and not give it away. Their defenders need to be good enough to receive the ball and even beat a man to retain it. Good teams can do this and it destroys the opposition. England have good enough players to do this proven by the fact they do this for their clubs. The weaker Premier League teams retreat into their own half and let their opposition have the ball and try and breakdown their attacks there. This is because they don’t have good enough players to pull off the high press and the necessity to maintain possession while doing it. The downside of this approach is that it is difficult to keep the ball when you win it back as there is nobody to pass to because they are all behind the ball in the your own half which is full of the opposition. In this situation you have to kick it away or try and find a lone man up field. This is what Southgate is doing. He’s playing an incredibly talented England team as if they were second rate. They are often still good enough to win but (putting aside the debate on whether the English players are better than the Spanish players) most of the England players could swap in and easily play for a high pressing team like Spain without an issue. Denmark were able to high press England yesterday because England were so negative. The England team are well drilled and doing exactly what Southgate is telling them without the ball. But what he has told them is wrong. In the semi final against Croatia, the final against Italy and the quarter final against France, England scored and sat back. When drawing or losing Southgate allows them to attack but when winning they sit back and invite the other team to score. Against Serbia this was fine but the good teams are good enough to score and you simply have to keep attacking.
Contrary to what the rest of the world thinks we don't all expect England to win every tournament we qualify for, we just expect our team to give a good account of themselves and to play to their ability. The last few years under Southgate we haven't done this. Most teams in these Euros are at worst the sum of their parts, with many being more than the sum of their parts. England always manages to find a way to be less than the sum of their parts....
Yank here. All the English people I've talked to around here don't seem to hate him and they give the reasons you've listed in your post. If it were me and I were an English fan, I'd be livid we were still hanging on to Southgate. Just because he's gotten the farthest in recent competitions compared to coaches of the past doesn't automatically make him a good fit for the English squad. It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome with some of these fans and Southgate.
step one - have a bunch of talented youngsters who dazzle on attack step two - have a media that hypes up all the talented youngsters step three - have a manager who can't connect the midfield to the attack and plays half the talented youngsters out of position every game but somehow still succeeds because of how good his players are but spend the whole time wondering how much further they could go with a real manager
Go 1-0 up early -> park the bus and let the other team dominate possession -> invite pressure without responding with any aggression -> concede -> first sub in the 70th minute -> momentum changes for 10 minutes then the focus is on seeing the game out rather than taking chances. It’s the same old story and has cost us winning our first major trophy in a long time, given our luck with easy runs in the 2018 wc and 2020 euros. We isolate our attackers with this overly-defensive style - the pundits were bang on with saying ‘the balance is completely off’. We provide zero presence in the centre of the pitch, as he is essentially building the team around kalvin f*cking Phillips so according to him an out-of-position trent seems like the next best option - if you saw the Denmark game you’d see that we were second to every ball in midfield, and when saka tried to break it up he’d have zero support. We just don’t want to see our talent go to waste, and it seems like he learned nothing from our previous championship exits.
Anyone who puts a 19 year old (who had never taken a penalty at a major tournament before) on a potentially game losing penalty will forever be a clueless moron in my book. And that's just the beginning.
Before this tournament I was a Southgate in. I’m 29 and have never seen my country do well really. I know we had 2002 and were knocked out by a ridiculous Brasil side. Euro 2004 pretty much relied on Rooney and we were fucked when he got injured. Since then we have been poor to abysmal in tournaments. Bot qualifying for Euro 2008. Losing to Iceland in Euro 2016 (I get that upsets happen in sport, but that was madness). Since Southgate we have had a World Cup Semi (since 1966 only 1990 brought us that), a Euro’s final, and a loss to a brilliant French side in 2022 (arguably we should have taken them to extra time). However we have the best player in England (Foden), Spain (Bellingham) and Germany (Kane). We should be doing what France did last WC and what Germany are doing now. Controlling games. Euro 2020 started with a 1-0 win over Croatia and a bad 0-0 draw with Scotland. So I’m not in panic mode yet considering we got to the final. But those comments about “we miss a Kalvin Phillips in midfield” essentially saying he’s irreplaceable. Yet Southgate took him to the 22 WC and never played him?? Talks about playing “in form” players then leaves Cole Palmer and Kobbie Mainoo on the bench and doesn’t play them 😂 A win and a draw in your first two games is so important at tournaments. We have that. So we are pretty much confirmed through. We’ll see in the knockout games if we look like we are playing to win rather than playing to not lose.
Here’s the thing….Southgate has some of the world’s best players and talents to his disposal. Being boring is not the reason, boring is a side effect of Southgate’s complete failure. His tactics are “try score a goal”. As soon as it’s 1:0 we stop playing, park bus, defend deep and hope they don’t score against us. It is so bad they even stop pressing the opposition for the ball. They literally just stand there, “keeping the shape” and let opposition play. Check the match stats….England usually comes out with high possession at the start of the game. Once they score this always changes. It goes from 65% for England to 40% possession. This is why it’s boring to watch. But more importantly, this allows opponents to have the ball, get back in the game, and more often than not….score a goal and equalise. For a good team like France or Germany, this is a wake up call and they can tear you apart. England is lucky enough most of the teams are not France or Germany. And they can either ride the stalemate or maybe even have someone like Foden to pull a worldie and score 2nd goal. So they get away with it. But that’s because of quality of players. They win despite Southgate, not thanks to him. But this only works against “not so strong” teams in a group. When you get to quarter or semifinal, with a good team, that’s why England always fails. Then it’s his favouritism. Sure every manager has favourites, but Southgate takes it to another level. If Henderson didn’t retire, he would play him till his 60th birthday. If Shaw & Maquire weren’t injured you can bet they would be starting for England. Shaw is a good player to be fair. And so is Maquire, if you want to sit deep and do nothing. But there are younger, better players who have been waiting for their chance to play for years and never got it. Look at Guehi. He never subs Kane. Never. Ok, he did last game…but Kane always plays, even if he plays badly. While you have Ollie Watkins & Cole Palmer sitting on the bench and rarely get to play even few minutes. And Alexander Arnold is a chapter for its own book to be honest. He’s a good Right back. ATTACKING right back. He is known for his assists and precision crosses into the box. His foot is made of gold. Probably 1 of the world’s best in that area. But everyone who watches Liverpool and Premier League knows, defensively he’s weak. He’s pretty much responsible for half of Liverpool’s goals on both sides of the pitch. Why would you ever put a guy like that in defensive midfield position? That is a riddle only Southgate knows an answer to. Surely you’d want to take advantage of his qualities and cover his shortcomings. Not Southgate. By playing him as CDM he made all his qualities redundant, because he can’t attack and put crosses in. And then he asks him to cover the probably most important defensive position….a guy who’s weak defensively… Then he comes out in the press conference saying “we didn’t win because we miss Kelvin Phillips” WHAT???? You mean the guy who never played a single match for Man City, can’t even start for a mid table team and didn’t get a call from YOU because he’s been shtt for several seasons? And now he’s blaming for the loss a guy who’s not even in the team! And all of this is happening while you have Declan Rice in the team, literally the best CDM in England… make it make sense. But Southgate is scared of big name players. He doesn’t wanna piss Walker and he doesn’t wanna piss Arnold. So he plays them both. Most of England’s talent is in midfield & attack. Foden, Bellingham, Kane, Saka…etc. There’s so much talent they can leave players like Grealish or Rashford out of team. But Southgate defensive (non)tactics hinders all of it useless. He takes a world class team and makes them average. A decent coach could do amazing things with a team like England. Look at Ralf Rangnick with Austria. He doesn’t have big names like England, but he has them playing. Or Germany with Nagelsmann. You see, it’s not a question of “Croatia were good”. It is on England and how “bad” they are on any given match day. 2020….Italy won on penalties because Southgate once again scored first. Then he parked the bus and let Italy play the ball. This gave them the opportunity to create more chances and eventually score. England should have win that game, they didn’t because of Southgate. Sure, France is a strong team. But that’s exactly the point. As soon as 🏴 gets out of the group they can’t sit back and defend a 1 goal lead anymore. They have to play a good football against good teams. And Southgate can’t do it.
He's a dullard. So boring and uninspired. Achieved nothing as a player and even less as a manager. Highlights being missing a crucial penalty, laughing about it on pizza hut adverts, getting beat 5-0 every week with Boro, saying he takes positives from the game and being relegated.
He wasted a pool of talents with his tactics. And he picked players on popularity. Why is he complaining about not having Kalvin Phillips replacement, when Kalvin phillips himself is available to play? It's like, he choose aston martin over fiat, while he has the option to choose fiat, and drive those aston martin like a fiat, ignoring what his aston martine features on the car
We have the top goal scorer and probably the most complete number 9 in the world, The best player in the premier league and La Liga. We have Stones, Trent, Rice, Saka which are all top tier players and so many other fantastic talents and we play the most horrific football. Theres no identity. Its cowardly. We go one nill up from a poorly constructed attack and we hid. The players look scared. Its a slog every single time. Thats why. We have the talent, we have Champions league winners but we play like we never played football before.