France sat back and sat on their lead. They allowed England to have the ball knowing we could barely create anything from open play. They were never in danger of losing the tie... you make it sound like we were trashing France and they lucked out, when that was simply not the case.
Opponent | Games | Win % | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD |
---|
France | 2 | 0% | - | - | 2 | 3 | 5 | -2 |
Italy | 4 | 0% | - | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | -2 |
Brazil | 1 | 0% | - | 1 | - | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Germany | 5 | 20% | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
Belgium | 4 | 25% | 1 | - | 3 | 2 | 6 | -4 |
Hungary | 4 | 25% | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 6 | -1 |
Denmark | 3 | 33% | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
Spain | 3 | 33% | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
Scotland | 3 | 33% | 1 | 2 | - | 5 | 2 | 3 |
Netherlands | 2 | 50% | 1 | - | 1 | 2 | 3 | -1 |
Croatia | 4 | 50% | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
Poland | 2 | 50% | 1 | 1 | - | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Slovenia | 2 | 50% | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | 0 | 1 |
USA | 2 | 50% | 1 | 1 | - | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Czechia | 3 | 67% | 2 | - | 1 | 7 | 2 | 5 |
Clearly he's a great Manager taking England places with this data... as I said before. As soon as we meet an organised, tactical opponent we struggle massively. That isn't the skillset for a Manager when the nations ambition is to win a trophy and not just have vibes and give it "a good go". The expectation for England is to win, not just turn up and participate. You can't scrape through an entire Tournament playing mediocre teams, theres comes a point when the draw spits out a tough opponent and when that happens under Southgate we tend to not win.
This is ultimately where Southgates cup record should be somewhat ignored. World Cup 2018 we played: Tunisia (won), Panama (won), Belgium (lost). We then had a round 16 against Colombia (won), beat Sweden in the quarters and then lost to Croatia in the semis. Other than Belgium, would you say that Tunisia, Panama, Colombia or Sweden are tricky, organised opponents? Would you expect Spain to lose against any of those four? We then lost to Belgium in the 3rd place playoff. It was an easy draw for us and we still managed to lose three times.
Roll on to the euros. A better tournament for us, probably the best under Southgate, better than the World Cups. But dear god did he bottle the final. We beat Croatia, Germany and Denmark to reach the final. No real complaints for me here, although I was deeply angry at the final as it seemed like we reverted back to our usual performance and bottled it. Both the players and Southgate was at fault for that game, but Southgates reluctance to use subs and go for the win cost us the Tournament. Again, a match which relied on the Manager to make good calls and he fecked it.
This tournament we were mediocre, didn't really have a tough game until we met France and then ballsed it up. Again, I repeat my previous points, we are a team under Southgate that can beat the easier/medium difficulty fixtures with consistency but fail big time against the harder and more organised opposition. That is generally the typical England performance for us in the past 30 years (with the exception of Steve McClaren).
Side note, we've played 13 games in 2022 and won 5.