He's a terrible terrible manager no question. England fans that follow the u21s have been of that opinion since the start of his time with England.
Under 21 Euros 2019
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He's a terrible terrible manager no question. England fans that follow the u21s have been of that opinion since the start of his time with England.
Thanks.
Only 1 second place side goes through out of the 3 groups. If France win today then both will have 6. They only both go through 100% if they draw the last game. Either can go out on GD if they lose.
Good goal first decent thing he's done
Especially when you a have a failed league 2 coach in charge of the kids.
Don't get the pessimism at all really from England fans here. Future is undisputedly bright for them in terms of player talent. The squad here, whilst unbalanced, is talented. Having an awful manager doesn't change that. If you get 2 starts from an u21 team you've done very well. Good chance AWB, Foden, Maddison will all be starters in the future for the first team.
Yeah but the other second placed teams only have 3 pts. Technically they arent yet i suppose but they should be through barring a disastrous last match.
Yes but the big two sides in both groups have played each other. Spain and Italy will most likely both end up with 6. Denmark likely to as well.
Agree. Results have been poor for the youth sides this season no question but there are a better standard of individual talents coming through. I think as @SilentWitness mentioned there is a concern that there's a big imbalance towards attacking talents coming up, I think that's true if you look down the age groups too. And the paucity of central midfielders coming through.
That said, our game management and the number of basic defensive errors that we are making at all levels recently isn't great.
France ahead through Dembele.
Dembele goal, great cross and header. Bully boy.
I'd imagine a lack of defensive minded midfielders is a concern for the majority of the top nations rather than just England. Loads of DM's play elsewhere as youth players.
I don't know why people keep blaming the coach. Maybe he's an idiot, but it's not his fault players score own goals, can't catch a ball that come straight at them, collect a red for no reason and leave so much space to their opponents that they can take all the time in the world to pick a corner.
If you want to be nice you can blame a certain lack of experience, but in the end it's an individual issue either way and Romania's team had exactly the same average age.
If you want to be nice you can blame a certain lack of experience, but in the end it's an individual issue either way and Romania's team had exactly the same average age.
We mentioned the coach's short coming's pre tournament in fairness. He isn't the reason they lost todays game but he's definitely the reason that they constantly underperform.
It never fails to amaze me how every level of English football always gets the unwarranted hype it does, at every tournament.
They're shite.
They're shite.
Not sure how you work that one out. We outperformed expectations in the World Cup and Nations League and anyone that followed the u21s had next to no expectation for this comp.
Just a generic cliche about how over-hyped England are. Nothing really to see here.
"Outperformed expectations"
2nd in a group with Tunisia and Panama
Past Colombia in penalties
Past Sweden in QF
Lost in SF
I know the last Euro's fiasco made a dent on the NT, but where's the "outperformance" part there, not rolling over and losing against Colombia? Sweden?.
Yes, outperforming expectations. Reaching a world cup semi final is outperforming expectations for England, we've been a complete disaster at most tournaments and the side wasn't considered anywhere near as talented as sides 5-10 years ago. Plenty of non-England fans were predicting we'd struggle to get out of groups, and then had Colombia and Sweden as favourites. Going out in ET to a good Croatian team in a semi-final was beyond what most people would have predicted.
It wasn't just the Euro's fiasco, it was a long line of failures. Getting to the semi wasn't some huge accomplishment because we beat no elite side, but we were competent .. which for the England NT is overachieving.
Yeah, we got past sides that we usually struggle against and won our first penalty shootout in like 8 attempts, baby steps of course. In the Nations League we topped a group every man and his dog would have betted on us to finish bottom of. I felt we were value for a win in every game we played in that group too, or at least a result. We finish third overall which isn’t bad and I feel is the team progressing still. If you actually look at youth tournaments over the past few years we’ve probably won as many as any other nation. I don’t really think we should be feeling down in the dumps about the NT setup despite this farcical showing in Italy.
Embarrassing final 20 minutes for Croatia. Had to score 2 goals and just sat off France and let them keep possession. Very poor mentality, had no belief and just gave up with ages left.
Tbf I can't remember last time we had this poor national team. Šunjić, Vlašić and Brekalo could go on and make nice careers, Moro also has potential to be decent player, but the rest of them are just lucky to be here representing Croatia.
England's tournament record v Sweden is generally awful and Colombia had a decent Copa America so far so strong generation for them. Maybe not hardest teams in knock outs but that's the way the draw works sometimes as Portugal enjoyed in Euro 2016.
Yes, I know it's not entirely black and white for everyone, but what I saw from England this tournament were two decent team performances against France and Romania until some lad at the back had a monumental brain fart and the team fell apart. I don't know how he did things before the tournament, but watching these two games I would never get the impression that coaching was the problem.
Unlike France for example, who despite winning both matches and having one of the best squads in the tournament don't impress as a team at all.
Against France we played some uncharacteristically good stuff for Boothroyd team in fairness. That said, against Romania he went with Dowell as the DLP which left the defence massively exposed whenever they broke as he has no defensive qualities at all, which is understandable given he’s an attacking midfielder. I still feel the selection of only one defensive minded midfielder in the squad was really stupid and typical of the manager.
But I agree that the defenders basically threw the games away with terrible errors.
England defensive options just aren't that strong. Would've helped if he'd put Sessegnon to left back as never heard of Lloyd Kelly (who's just joined Bournemouth for 15m).
Other options are just championship players, Tomori, Clarke Salter (got sent off twice in his few league starts for Sunderland), Konsa (who I do think will play in premier league next two years) and Da Silva.
Other problem was showing faith in Solanke who offered little first game.
Other options are just championship players, Tomori, Clarke Salter (got sent off twice in his few league starts for Sunderland), Konsa (who I do think will play in premier league next two years) and Da Silva.
Other problem was showing faith in Solanke who offered little first game.
Pretty sure Tomori will be playing in the PL soon, probably next season. I do rate him but he made two bad errors here. Then you have Tuanzebe, Godfrey and Kelly who will be in the Premier next season so there is hope for some quality to develop from this age group of centre backs.
I thought England were favourites?
Anyone know why Tuanzebe wasn't involved in this?
That Romania squad has some legendary names, puscas, hagi, dragomir.
If you believe we did anything special in the world cup, I despair. We barely scored a goal from open play, limped across against Columbia, got embarrassed by the first decent team we came across.
England just aren't very good. The u21 are another bunch of overyhyped future flops.
Bothroyd seemed to make the classic mistake of looking at our attacking players, seeing how good they were compared to our defensive players, and deciding to play to our strengths and overload the squad and starting line up with attacking players. Essentially the polar opposite of how Southgate approached our World Cup campaign where he aimed to nullify our defensive weakness by adding an extra central defender. Bothroyd could have quite easily played two defensively solid midfielders to cover the defence and still had more than enough creativity in the side.
It's a particularly annoying performance as it hurts the reputation of England's youth teams just at a point when we seem to be seeing a mentality shift in Premier League clubs whereby giving youngsters such as Wan-Bissaka and Rice increased chances is increasingly trendy. Similarly we've seen an increased willingness of foreign clubs to give English players a chance at a time when those countries will soon be choosing the permit restrictions to set on post-Brexit talent. One could say I'm overstating the impact of one tournament but we can draw a direct correlation between both sets of opportunities and the performance of English youth teams in 2017.
It's a particularly annoying performance as it hurts the reputation of England's youth teams just at a point when we seem to be seeing a mentality shift in Premier League clubs whereby giving youngsters such as Wan-Bissaka and Rice increased chances is increasingly trendy. Similarly we've seen an increased willingness of foreign clubs to give English players a chance at a time when those countries will soon be choosing the permit restrictions to set on post-Brexit talent. One could say I'm overstating the impact of one tournament but we can draw a direct correlation between both sets of opportunities and the performance of English youth teams in 2017.
Think too much is being made of our lack of quality defensive players anyway, we are only just beginning to see the benefits of EPPP and the FA's youth development restructuring on our youth teams but due to the differing points of maturity between attacking players and defensive players it was always going to be the attacking players coming to the fore first.
In their heads.
England's Golden generation is the players born in 2000-2001. The older players that won the u20 world cup and u19 Euros have piggybacked off the 2000 born players reputation. The media crowned those u20 and u19 players the golden generation in 2007 off the back of successful tournament results, as opposed to just looking at talent. The 2000 born players were seen an extremely talented group of players before their u17 Euros and u17 World Cup. This fact has been muddled due to the media hype and their ignorance surrounding these English group of kids.
If you look at this u21 group, Foden, Gibbs White, Sancho (didn't partake), Hudson Odoi (didn't partake), Sessegnon, etc... are all much younger than their teammates and opponents.
Tbf not starting your best player in a must win game does strike me as an odd choice...same for benching was bissaka for that south park kid(who made sure to match wan bissaka in the brainfart department for good measure)
Still yeah, england were mostly undone by their inability to finish and hilarious defensive brainfarts. So, they're ready for the first team!
Puskas the Romanian striker, only had 9 goals in 28 for midtable Serie B Palermo at aged 22/23, which isn't great, but he looked a really clever player. Really impressive. Wonder if he'll end up in Serie A soon.
Why did FA hire a manager that was fired because he was dead last in the whole Football League? Is there really no other better candidates around?
I don’t think that’s fair. Some UK betting sites might have had them as favourites but there’s no suggestion that the players thought that. I’d be amazed if they did.
A lot of people on here are forgetting that Boothroyd works to Southgate's instructions.
As for the best players not getting picked for last night's game, there is a policy of giving everyone in the squad a game to see how they deal with the pressures of tournament play - the thinking being that if they're good enough to be in the squad they should be good enough to be in the team.
As for the best players not getting picked for last night's game, there is a policy of giving everyone in the squad a game to see how they deal with the pressures of tournament play - the thinking being that if they're good enough to be in the squad they should be good enough to be in the team.
I'm just stating that it's a risky transfer strategy! Paying over the odds for young English talent. AWB is never worth 60 million, never.
People tend to forget he plays in a very defensive set up at Palace, he actually has a hard working right winger in front of him in Andros Townsend that's helps him. We won't have that.
Only Phil Foden is worth that type of money in that u21 set up! Could easily turn out being another Jones or Smalling