Agree that he's worthy of being dropped right now and I wouldn't have a problem with it. None if the attacking players have been great though.
England Euro 2024 Squad and Discussion
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Come on now, I don't think you'd find many even trying to argue that foden is a better player than Rodri.
Well they are vastly different. Both have been brilliant for City this season. No reason to demean Foden.
Those two can carry a team on their backs or at least have significant impact, even if the circumstances and environment aren't perfect. We've never seen that with Foden.
If one of the four had to miss the entire season due to injury, and you were a City fan, who would you choose? Haaland, De Bruyne, Rodri, or Foden?
De Bruyne. He usually misses a fair chunk of the season anyway.
As a rephrase: if you could pick three of the four to play every game in the season injury free, which three would you play?
Rodri, Foden and Haaland. De Bruyne at his best was obviously a better player than Foden. I think 'was' is the operative word.
Fair enough, I understand your take here. I disagree, in that I think KdB at full fitness for a season is harder to replace adequately than Foden, but I get why you disagree.
We dodged a bullet not buying Kane.
The argument we've not played anyone of note is both true and irrelevant. History is littered with champions who win World Cups, Euros and Champions Leagues without paying anyone until the very latter stages.
2016 Portgual faced Croatia, Wales and Poland on their way to final. So this idea because England might reach the final without playing Spain, Manchester City, Barcelona and Brazil's 1970 team, it will be a caveated path to final, is nonsense
2016 Portgual faced Croatia, Wales and Poland on their way to final. So this idea because England might reach the final without playing Spain, Manchester City, Barcelona and Brazil's 1970 team, it will be a caveated path to final, is nonsense
Kdb we've done it without him a couple of times and himself and Phil have swapped importance over the last 12 months.
Also Bernardo Silva was massive in 2018/19 when KdB was out injured, no?
Agreed.
Maybe some of the German posters here can explain how this version of Kane scored 30+ goals last season. Guy can barely move.
He’ll start the semi final for sure just hope Southgate has the stones to hook him after 60 minutes (but he won’t)
What any competent manager would do is drop Harry Kane, and bring him on after 60 mins if Watkins or Toney are crap instead of the reverse. That would actually send a message to Harry Kane and he might also get a bit more space in the game to finish a chance. He's bloody useless when there is energy in the match.
Doesn't explain why he's doing his best Rashford impersonation. Never seen a player stroll around and do feck all for a whole game (tournament?). Why can't Safegate see things need changing up front?
I think there’s a fair argument to be made that he’s England’s best goal keeper of the last 30 years or so, including Seaman.
100%, that was peak Bernardo in a City shirt. A lot of people at teh start of the next season argued our best midfield didn't include KDB as Bernardo and Gundogan did so well together (they were wrong).
In general with City we can win the league without KDB, Foden or Haaland but we can't win a game without Rodri. I think Foden over the last 12 months has become our most important player outside of Rodri.
I still stand by it. In case you missed the full season just gone Foden won player of the year over a 38 game season. That trumps anything Saka has done this or any other season.
When has Kane ever been a good runner and presser ?
I find him really hard to rate, but it isn’t unreasonable to say he’s the best England keeper in my lifetime.
Just realised Kane is somehow only 30yo. Has the mobility of someone closer to 40. England would be far more dangerous with someone that can stretch a defence than one forever dropping deep
There were a few examples of him not reaching the box for easy crosses. He looks like he's completely gassed to me. This whole tournament has been about Southgate being bullied into better selections. Foden and Kane both need benching. Foden has shown he can only do it for Pep.
Exactly this. Yesterday in particular he was always one or two steps behind the pace and/or didn't anticipate quick enough when they tried to get him the ball.
The thing that I don't get, is how deep he drops. Switzerland had every player past the centre circle numerous times, all playing football, knocking it about. Kane was way inside them defending.
Just go and stand on the halfway line, or at least have a tactic where Kane comes deep and defends but a fast player is on the halfway line. At least that way Kane is an extra player capable of a finding him if it breaks. Having nobody there is stupid. No team is going to push that high and leave a fast player behind them onside in his own half.
Just go and stand on the halfway line, or at least have a tactic where Kane comes deep and defends but a fast player is on the halfway line. At least that way Kane is an extra player capable of a finding him if it breaks. Having nobody there is stupid. No team is going to push that high and leave a fast player behind them onside in his own half.
From The Athletic. Sums up why it's hard to be excited about being in a semi.
I’ve never understood it either
Kane has been a fantastic player but this version needs to be on the bench, he has offered virtually nothing. Whats annoying is he has become the new Henderson, in the team for ‘leadership’ and ‘experience’,* a classic Southgate aspiration. It’s not that he’s wrong to want unity etc., it obviously helps, although is it worth playing with effectively ten men for? If it works…. I guess… maybe. If it doesn’t, then hopefully he would understand why most of us want him gone.
*See also out of position tripper.
*See also out of position tripper.
He’ll never have a tache as magnificent though
The way Safegate plays will cost England, or hold them back massively.
It's fine doing that against the big boys but not against Slovakia and Slovenia (and the rest).
These are games where you play to your strength and give the players confidence whilst also sharpening your attacking plays.
If England try this shit against a good team and then find themselves 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go, it will be much harder to come back from that.
But he has taken them far thanks to individual brilliance so there's still hope it works two more times.
It's fine doing that against the big boys but not against Slovakia and Slovenia (and the rest).
These are games where you play to your strength and give the players confidence whilst also sharpening your attacking plays.
If England try this shit against a good team and then find themselves 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go, it will be much harder to come back from that.
But he has taken them far thanks to individual brilliance so there's still hope it works two more times.
Gareth Southgreat with the master plan.
Build a team optimise for 0-0 draws and spend all training efforts on penalties.
what a guy
Build a team optimise for 0-0 draws and spend all training efforts on penalties.
what a guy
If England win the tournament no-one will care and he will become Sir Gareth Southgate.
Yep this is still true. I'd happily win it on penalties next two games, if anything, it would be amazing after all the years of penalty pain!
Obviously. I mean even the ‘good’ tournaments we remember fondly were pretty iffy at times. We only actually won 2 games at Euro 96, and only scored 2 goals in the Group Stage at both Italia 90 and Euro 2020.
There does feel like something extra shit about this one though. The complete lack of actual chances or even shots on target is usually bad. Still, as you say, in 15 years time we’ll only remember the Slovakia game for the overhead kick.
He's been even worse this time.
Before I get into this again, I'll just say that I somewhat disagree with @Pickle85 's reply to you here:
I always say that Southgate did well until the Euro 2020/1 final. The 2018 World Cup was a breath of fresh air, and the lead up to the Euros final against Italy was the same. The problem was he cost us the final the same way he cost us against Croatia, which we were lenient with him on because we thought he'd learn, but he didn't. He's been horrible ever since.
Back to @giorno 's post. I find it funny that you label my criticisms of Southgate as "delusional bullshit" even though it's clear that not only do his mistakes cost us, he never learns from any of them. He repeats the same mistakes EVERY tournament. We're seeing the exact same things here that we're evident in EVERY tournament. Parking the bus after going ahead, which gives the opposition the incentive to attack non-stop until we usually crumble. Cost us against Croatia, cost us against Italy, almost cost us against Slovakia and almost against Switzerland in extra time. Except that time we weren't even ahead unlike the others. Then there's the refusal to deviate away from his favourites and reward the backups who are outperforming them. We saw that with Rashford and now Palmer.
Pointing these things out isn't "delusional". They're actually happening, and have been for years. You just refuse to accept that they're problems. You're only noticing there's a problem now because you didn't realise how much Maguire (on set pieces) and Sterling (in general play) bailed him out. Aside from missing two of our best performers in recent years, there's nothing different.
No offence but the only "delusional bullshit" I see is you thinking Southgate won't play Shaw because his Ouija board tells him not to or something
Shaw is in the favourite category. If fit, he will play. The only way he doesn't start is if he's not fit enough to play, at the very least, a full 90. I find it surprising that you'll be critical of Southgate over this, but didn't bat an eyelid when he brought Sterling on over Rashford against France despite the fact that Sterling had just had to fly back home to deal with a family emergency, so he was in no way prepared to play in such a game. Never mind the fact that Rashford was outperforming him the whole tournament on top of that.Ive been pretty about Englands chances for years now but weirdly I think they might just do it this time. They are bound to put in a good performance soon and it wouldnt surprise me if they put in a good performance at just the right time.
You have this belief that just doesn't take reality into account, that England was pinned back by Croatia and Italy by choice, instead of simply not being able to avoid it. In both england dropped back because their high press was getting beaten, they didn't just drop back on their own. And of course there's Qatar, were whatever mistakes you ascribe him, were certainly of a different variety, given England played much more expansive and attacking game in that WC.
This, beyond the "manager who got everything right, gets a couple things wrong in a FINAL, obviously it's all his fault that we didn't win!"
The final in question which you lost against an equal, on penalties, btw
You will never have a manager who doesn't make mistakes. Deschamps makes mistakes, Scaloni makes mistakes(he made mistakes in a WC final! They won the shootout), Alf Ramsey made mistakes. Guardiola rather famously makes miatakes. It will happen, doesn't matter who the manager is. Teams win all the time thanks in part to their manager's good work and despite their mistakes
Against Crotia, I'm not sure he even had the players to try and change the dynamic of the game in the second half. I'll give you Italy, made moves a bit late and of a type that didn't change anything, while ignoring the player that most of all gave England a chance to break up Italy's pressure until after the goal(at which point he became sort or pointless). And the Rashford/Sancho subs were, uh, questionable to say the least. You still lost a shootout, against an in form side fielding way better defenders ans midfielders than you, plus the best GK in the competition. It's ridiculous to blame the manager alone for this. I often heard mention of England scoring early which conveniently ignores the fact a big reason for that early goal was Southgate's choice of lineup and structure to start the game.
Except this tournanent is nothing like the previous ones. Evidenced by the fact that you used to smash the likes of Slovakia or Switzerland, and here you should have lost to both
Fair enough
Every team has problems, every manager has specific hang ups, teams win by getting over them. You keep screaming about Rashford's sub vs France - A game in which England missed a penalty to send it to extra time!!!!. That's Rashford on fresh legs running at tired defence for 30 minutes!. Not subbing him earlier clearly wasn't the reason you lost, missing the penalty was! We *just* saw Spain's manager do a "Southgate" and...Spain won anyways, despite that!
You are simultaneously underestimating how difficult it is to win these tournaments, underestimating the role of the manager over the entire run from qualifiers into the tournament proper, and overestimating the importance of single game decisions. It's not that the latter don't matter, they do. You hope they won't be game killers - and whatever you believe, obviously Southgate's mistakes were not of this type - and that the team will overcome them. Every tournament winner ever - bar the best Brazil's - did. You want to win a tournament? At some point you are gonna have to win a game despite the manager. If you need the manager to be get everything right all the time to win, you will never win
I was obviously joking about Shaw. I do expect he'll start if fit, it's an obvious choice. As for Sterling, nah, that was a mistake, yeah, of course it was. Not so much sending on Sterling - a mistake, yeah, but also one I feel 99% of managers would have made in those circumstances - as taking off SakaNo offence but the only "delusional bullshit" I see is you thinking Southgate won't play Shaw because his Ouija board tells him not to or something
Rashford's a different matter. Nevermind that Foden had his best gamr for England, at that point, chasing the game with 10 minutes left, that was the obvious sub to make. And if Harry "trophyless with Bayern Munich" Kane scores that freaking penalty, it doesn't matter
Playing for a the team that creates the most chances in Europe helps a lot. Playing for a static, defensive and coward England doesn't.
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