Alex99
Rehab's Pete Doherty
- Joined
- May 30, 2009
- Messages
- 17,810
Bolded are actually things he has consistently done throughout his England reign so far. They might not be to our liking but a World Cup semifinal and two Euros finals are proof that while he gets a lot of things wrong he does get things right, too. As mentioned last night England were crying out for a pacey outlet like Gordon and he fecked up on that, but Shaw over Trippier and bringing on Palmer turned out to be the right decision within the context of how he wanted to see his side play.
Really, though, a lot of the stuff he gets wrong has its roots from his cautious, and at times cowardly, approach to football and for this reason alone he clearly isn't the man to take England to the next level. But tactical nous comes in different flavours and Southgate's happen to be not many people's cup of tea.
Have you been watching the same manager? Reacting to changes isn't doing stuff after a goal, it's doing things to prevent the goal once you've noticed things in the match have changed.
The story of the last Euros final was him sitting on his hands watching Italy take control of the game until they inevitably equalised, and then he happily sat through extra-time doing nothing, before giving Sancho and Rashford less than a minute. The Slovakia game this time around was so bad that it almost seemed like he'd have preferred us to go out rather than change anything, before Bellingham saved him with an over-head kick. The Switzerland game was another similar tale, with him watching us be completely ineffective and only responding once we'd actually conceded. The Netherlands game was 1-1 from the 18th minute, but he gave Palmer and Watkins about 10 minutes do something. Last night we equalised, gave Spain a slightly uncomfortable minute or two, then they took back complete control. His response to that was to twiddle his thumbs for 10-15 minutes while he thought about bringing Gallagher and Trippier on to provide some energy at the back, but he waited too long and Spain scored the winner.
This is before we get to him starting Kane in every match, and letting him stink it out for an hour or more before subbing him off, despite knowing he wasn't fully fit, and repeatedly trying to wedge Foden and Bellingham into the side together despite it not once looking like it was going to work.
He used to have a clear plan for how we were going to play, but that's not been remotely the case for this tournament. He picked a squad with no idea of what he wanted them to do, then spent the tournament trying to figure it out, until he was eventually beaten by the first good team we came up against (and even then he was almost bailed out by yet another individual moment).
Started the tournament with the Alexander-Arnold midfield experiment, constantly shuffling Bellingham and Foden around to try and find a solution to play them both together, and about the only thing he appeared to instruct us to do was knock it long (with a team full of players used to playing from the back), except we had no one making runs for the knock-down as he'd left all of those players on the bench or at home.
He pretty much said he doesn't know what to do with the midfield without Kalvin Phillips available, and he quite clearly doesn't have a clue what to do in attack without Kane on top form (and arguably without players like Rashford and Sterling).