Better to be lucky than good........

R0nald0

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Under a rug on top of a mountain under the stars.
Some say it is better to be lucky than good. Well England are certainly that. The opponents we have had to face in the last 4 tournaments from the groups to the knockouts are simply incredible - we have had consistently the easiest ride ever - this is one of the reasons I don't take Southgate's "achievements" seriously. Below is a list of all opponents and their FIFA ranking at the time of the match:-

2018
  • Tunisia 21st
  • Panama 55th
  • Belgium 3rd
  • Colombia 16th
  • Sweden 24th
  • Croatia 20th
2020
  • Croatia 14th
  • Scotland 44th
  • Czech Republic 40th
  • Germany 12th
  • Ukraine 24th
  • Denmark 10th
  • Italy 7th

2022
  • Iran 20th
  • USA 16th
  • Wales 19th
  • Senegal 18th
  • France 4th

2024
  • Serbia 33rd
  • Denmark 21st
  • Slovenia 57th
  • Slovakia 48th
  • Switzerland 19th
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Can I mention the rugby World Cup? If England were an oligarch owned PL football team this place would be absolutely convinced the draws are all bent.
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After the groups it’s not a draw.

The groups haven’t been that easy for England, it’s more the route after the first round have been quite favourable in some of the recent tournaments.
 
R0nald0 said:
Some say it is better to be lucky than good. Well England are certainly that. The opponents we have had to face in the last 4 tournaments from the groups to the knockouts are simply incredible - we have had consistently the easiest ride ever - this is one of the reasons I don't take Southgate's "achievements" seriously. Below is a list of all opponents and their FIFA ranking at the time of the match:-

2018
  • Tunisia 21st
  • Panama 55th
  • Belgium 3rd
  • Colombia 16th
  • Sweden 24th
  • Croatia 20th
2020
  • Croatia 14th
  • Scotland 44th
  • Czech Republic 40th
  • Germany 12th
  • Ukraine 24th
  • Denmark 10th
  • Italy 7th

2022
  • Iran 20th
  • USA 16th
  • Wales 19th
  • Senegal 18th
  • France 4th

2024
  • Serbia 33rd
  • Denmark 21st
  • Slovenia 57th
  • Slovakia 48th
  • Switzerland 19th
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Wowzer, those are some easy draws. And of the 4 times or so they’ve faced top 10 teams, they’ve lost 3 of them (technically drew against Italy but lost on pens). The one win against 10th ranked Denmark coming in extra time as well.

Guess you can only beat what’s in front of you but Southgate has been very fortunate.
 
duffer said:
Just online?
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I mean the in person ones are also odd but in a different, much more twatty way.

Online it just seems to be a race to be as negative as possible. If England ends up winning, who the hell cares who was there along the way? I don't think I've ever seen fans of a club team bemoaning their clubs route to a final because it was too easy.
 
I'm not sure this means much unless you can show that other similarly ranked teams to us all have a much harder ride.

As Duffer implies - this might be perfectly normal.
 
It's the in game luck I'm more worried about. Give me the "easy" draws, but in game luck does have a tendency to even out at some point. Hopefully not before this tournament is out and Gareth is on his way.
 
Ish said:
Wowzer, those are some easy draws. And of the 4 times or so they’ve faced top 10 teams, they’ve lost 3 of them (technically drew against Italy but lost on pens). The one win against 10th ranked Denmark coming in extra time as well.

Guess you can only beat what’s in front of you but Southgate has been very fortunate.
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A petty addition maybe, but Belgium is missed a second time in 2018, another straight up loss :lol:

BE LUCKY!
 
Spaghetti Bolognese said:
After the groups it’s not a draw.

The groups haven’t been that easy for England, it’s more the route after the first round have been quite favourable in some of the recent tournaments.
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I don’t actually think any of it is bent. Just agreeing that Southgate’s England team have been absurdly lucky with their fixtures in tournaments.
 
duffer said:
England get "easy" groups because we win our qualifying groups and automatically play lower ranked sides for the first few games.
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People generally take that as a given don't they? I think they're more querying the knock out rounds.

Now people say England won the group and so they had it in their own hands...so did all of Portugal, Spain and Germany who won their respective groups.

If Georgia hadn't played out of their skins to beat Portugal then England would've faced the Netherlands in last 16. And if Germany hadn't scored in 93rd minute v Swiss it would've hypothetically been an England-Germany QF so that's where the ball is rolling as they couldn't really influence those two results.

England also only finished 2nd in 2018 and yet still got into the easier half of the draw! Last World cup though with Senegal-France was more what you'd expect from the knock out rounds and ultimately the only time they've failed to reach the SFs with Southgate in charge.
 
duffer said:
England get "easy" groups because we win our qualifying groups and automatically play lower ranked sides for the first few games.
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Its not just the first few games and the other big international teams tend to win their qualifying too.
 
duffer said:
That they took the time to look up each group stage side's FIFA ranking at the time kinda makes me think they were also talking about the group rounds as well.
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From my experience it's usually just Scottish and Welsh fans moaning about England qualifying groups, oblivious to them being in the top 4-5 seeds so obvious they'll get a decent draw.

England going by rankings were actually in the toughest qualifying group with Italy, Ukraine and Macedonia and breezed through it in a far more convincing fashion than anything we've seen in this tournament.
 
England’s group was not that bad considering Slovenia and Denmark could easily have knocked out Portugal and Germany, respectively. Serbia are also decent. Switzerland was not an easy QF (they knocked France out of the last Euros). I don’t deny Southgate has had some luck with draws but it’s never pointed out when the luck goes the other way like in Qatar when we faced the strongest team in the QFs.
 
First of all, the rankings have always been somewhat misleading. For years, Mexico were among the highest ranked teams in the world, yet no-one gave them serious consideration as potential winners of the World Cup. It tends to reflect how dominant teams are in their respective zones, which is why you see Iran as 20th best in the world in your list, when they were nowhere near that good in reality. By contrast, Germany were clearly better than 12th in the world when England played them.

Objectively speaking, Gareth Southgate has an excellent record in tournaments. Yes, there has been an element of 'luck', but England would have faced Italy in the quarters if it weren't for Switzerland beating them. Yes, it is not the most fancied Italian team, but they are holders and have never lost to England in a tournament fixture.

It just feels like there is a lot of confirmation bias here.

In addition, it's only recently that England have resorted to defensive tactics. In the last World Cup, England were among the better teams to watch and scored plenty of goals. Luck was not on their side when they drew France early on, and even in that game, they were pretty unfortunate to lose 2-1. A lot of people felt that France vs England would have been a worthy final.

Yes, England have certainly stumbled at the business end of tournaments, but actually getting there is no mean feat. Even this time round, they have had issues with their defence with no natural left back and first choice defenders unavailable. Those injury issues are missing from a lot of people's analyses.

I don't understand why people can't be more balanced in their appraisals and give some credit where it is due.
 
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You've still got to be good to capitalize on fortune. At this point, it's not happened. This 'good luck' has won nothing.

If it does lead to something, most Englishmen/women won't care. It's a big if.
 
FootballHQ said:
England also only finished 2nd in 2018 and yet still got into the easier half of the draw!
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I mean, England finished 2nd because it would put them into the easier half of the draw
 
giorno said:
I mean, England finished 2nd because it would put them into the easier half of the draw
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You only have that knowledge being drawn in the last few groups, not really available for first four drawn so again a bit of luck.
 
africanspur said:
England fans online are so odd.
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Yep.
I thought we had some horrific United "fans", but England are even worse.

It's like they'd prefer us to have gone out so they can do loads of ranting, so instead have to try and play down where we are.

I don't remember this being like this in Euro 96, but maybe as a teenager without the internet it was a different age of enjoying a tournament and hoping for the best.

Imagine being in a semi final v this Netherlands team and moaning!
 
Sandikan said:
Yep.
I thought we had some horrific United "fans", but England are even worse.

It's like they'd prefer us to have gone out so they can do loads of ranting, so instead have to try and play down where we are.

I don't remember this being like this in Euro 96, but maybe as a teenager without the internet it was a different age of enjoying a tournament and hoping for the best.

Imagine being in a semi final v this Netherlands team and moaning!
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Come on, this is a poor argument. No England fan wants to go out, if you're starting from the basis that England fans want to not win a tournament you're already on very questionable ground for a rational argument.

They're raising legitimate points, they expected more than drawing all but one game in normal time against the calibre we've faced. Two shots on target in two games since the group stage. They're looking at a capable squad and thinking what the feck is going on with performance levels that we have that calibre of players in the forward line but deliver shite.

That's all, ultimately the result will justify the performance IF they win it. If they don't they'll have achieved feck all, not even entertainment delivered in an entertainment industry.
 
In all fairness, in 96, they reacted to a slow start and reactions from it by scoring 6 in their next two group games, which were considered the tougher games of the group, though Scotland on more of a rivalry technicality. So they kind of earned a bit of breathing space for a fairly dull 0-0 vs a reasonably highly rated Spain, although they were kind of the better team - scored all penalties in that too, then the next 5 vs Germany.

Just writing that and realizing the standard of teams they played compared to 2024 should explain the differences in reactions, but can't blame Southgate for an expanded tournament.
 
2020 doesn't look particularly easy. Probably about what you would expect from a 24 team Euro. 2018 and this tournament are the ones that seem like the sides of the draw were notably unbalanced on paper and England benefited.

There's also an issue with with giving teams considered outside of the bigger nations appropriate credit if they're on form or playing well, and giving the big teams too much credit for name value/potential alone when they've played a poor tournament. This can skew perspective when looking back at older tournaments.
 
The manager proofs that they aren't so lucky all things considered.
 
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