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England v Bulgaria


David

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Did Southgate pick his best team? No. Did he pick a team capable of winning the game? Yes, as proved by the result. 

Most top league managers don't play their best eleven, when they play a weaker team in the early rounds of a competition. They utilise all of the players available to them.  Why would an international manager not do the same?

England play again on Tuesday. It's highly unlikely that Southgate will pick the same team. Will it be his best team? Probably not.  Hopefully he'll pick a team capable of winning, while at the same time giving others in his squad game time and gain more experience of playing international football.

I'd worry about Southgate's team selection ability or lack of, when England come up against tougher opposition.

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13 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

International games are no longer as easy as they used to be.

Might be proved wrong but my perception that the days of lots of countries getting spanked 6,7,8 - 0 are pretty much over other than the complete whipping boys.

As I said, first time Bulgaria have been beaten by 4 goals in 27 months.

Being a Derby fan over the last 4 years I thought you would know how hard it is breaking down the underdogs who come and defend for their lives.

Over the past few years England have ground teams down. Often half time scores are 0-0 or 1-0 and we go on to score 3 or 4 so lack of creativity is not something that is too worrying in my opinion.

I mean how many goals have we scored in our qualifiers recently? It feels like we comfortably win every game we play, particularly when the opposition is making dumb challenges and giving us free penalties when we have a guy who is probably the best penalty taker in the world. Thing is, I can't compare Derby to England, England has world class players that should be able to break the defensive underdogs down without much trouble. 

But when it came down to it, we couldn't score against Switzerland, and only scored once vs the Netherlands. We lacked creativity vs Croatia, too. And Colombia. That's when our lack of creativity gets exposed.

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Just now, Tyler Durden said:

You'd have thought that we hadn't just won 4-0 at home and were top of our qualifying group Dear Lord if we have got beaten there would be people on here throwing themselves out of windows 

The default hyperbolic response to anyone giving any form of criticism. 

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Just now, Andicis said:

Because context matters, and winning 4-0 against a rubbish side isn't that impressive. 

What would you find impressive then 6 nil or 7 nil? There's constructive feedback and there's also criticism for criticisms sake. It doesn't really matter a jot as the objective is to qualify out of the group which we are bang on track to do.

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3 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

What would you find impressive then 6 nil or 7 nil? There's constructive feedback and there's also criticism for criticisms sake. It doesn't really matter a jot as the objective is to qualify out of the group which we are bang on track to do.

Well I don't think Gareth Southgate is going to be contacting me for constructive feedback any time soon. Well there is no universe where we don't win this group comfortably, so we should be tinkering and trying out new players. Maddison has been miles better than Barkley, yet finds himself on the bench. Sancho has been lighting up the Bundesliga, benched for Rashford who's been mediocre. It's about the performance, not the result, and the performance wasn't great.

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52 minutes ago, Andicis said:

Obviously he's trying his best, and is doing a half decent job, but how good is good enough for us? It is his fault for the semi finals. The buck ultimately stops with the manager. He got it tactically wrong against both Croatia and the Netherlands, we got punished for it. Southgate is doing fine. But is fine enough? We have one of the best squads in world football, and some of the best young players coming through. When do we stop saying semi finals is good enough and start raising expectations for ourselves? 

You can't just mention the semi finals without any context and expect me to go for that. We beat a workman like Sweden and a Colombia without their best player (on pens), and then lost to a half reasonable side in Croatia, and then in the nations league, lost to the Netherlands who don't have a striker, when we had the best squad out of the 4 in the nations league finals. 

A half decent job? In 2016, we were dumped out of the European Championships by Iceland in the first knockout round. In 2014, we finished bottom of our group at the World Cup.

Southgate has been in the job since September 2016 and we've got to back-to-back semi finals and he has restored pride and a feel good factor into following the national team. Give the man more credit. He's not perfect but he has made a world of difference.

You say he should be more tactically astute and getting more out of the players at his disposal, but we've had managers in years gone by do so poorly that qualification for tournaments wasn't a given and there were question marks over whether we could even beat the likes of Sweden and Colombia in major tournament scenarios. When you consider where we have come from, it is way too soon to expect us to be reaching finals and winning tournaments.

You say we have one of the best squads in world football and some top young players coming through, but I think you are being generous with that. Five or six other countries could make exactly the same claim.

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5 minutes ago, Andicis said:

Well I don't think Gareth Southgate is going to be contacting me for constructive feedback any time soon. Well there is no universe where we don't win this group comfortably, so we should be tinkering and trying out new players. Maddison has been miles better than Barkley, yet finds himself on the bench. Sancho has been lighting up the Bundesliga, benched for Rashford who's been mediocre. It's about the performance, not the result, and the performance wasn't great.

Don't you think though that Southgate will rotate the squad for the midweek game.

Totally disagree with the comment regards being about the performance not the results Southgate would get slagged to high heaven if his team put in great performances but still failed to qualify from any group England were in.

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4 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

A half decent job? In 2016, we were dumped out of the European Championships by Iceland in the first knockout round. In 2014, we finished bottom of our group at the World Cup.

Southgate has been in the job since September 2016 and we've got to back-to-back semi finals and he has restored pride and a feel good factor into following the national team. Give the man more credit. He's not perfect but he has made a world of difference.

You say he should be more tactically astute and getting more out of the players at his disposal, but we've had managers in years gone by do so poorly that qualification for tournaments wasn't a given and there were question marks over whether we could even beat the likes of Sweden and Colombia in major tournament scenarios. When you consider where we have come from, it is way too soon to expect us to be reaching finals and winning tournaments.

You say we have one of the best squads in world football and some top young players coming through, but I think you are being generous with that. Five or six other countries could make exactly the same claim.

So the crux of your whole argument is the managers before him were crap, so that makes what he's doing amazing? No. It was impossible to do much worse than Hodgson, Capello and McClaren. 

Who was questioning whether we should beat Sweden or Colombia? Neither of those teams are anything special. We made bloody hard work of Colombia too. Why should the past have any weight on current performance? Our players are winning big trophies at club level, and performing well. We should be competing at the top of international football.

Only France and Belgium can argue they have a better squad than us in my opinion. By pure player talent, we should be competing to get into finals and win trophies. If Southgate doesn't get to at least a semi at the Euros, he's failed. Preferably a final minimum. 

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2 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

Don't you think though that Southgate will rotate the squad for the midweek game.

Totally disagree with the comment regards being about the performance not the results Southgate would get slagged to high heaven if his team put in great performances but still failed to qualify from any group England were in.

Do you consider it at all possible for us to not qualify from this group? We could put out the under 21's and probably piss this group. It's about performance. We should be dominating the game more than we are. He probably will rotate, I would hope so. The midfield balance didn't look good today. We haven't lost a qualifier since 2009, even with the dross managers we've had since then. Speaking as if we won't qualify is pretty silly for me.

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5 minutes ago, Van Gritters said:

He didn’t come back a man from Holland.

Do you think not? He seemed very mature when he arrived at Derby. Of course, he probably developed a lot as a player whilst at Derby, but I'd imagine that a year abroad at the age of 18 is far more of a character-forming experience than a year 100-odd miles up the road at the age of 19.

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5 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

What would you find impressive then 6 nil or 7 nil? There's constructive feedback and there's also criticism for criticisms sake. It doesn't really matter a jot as the objective is to qualify out of the group which we are bang on track to do.

View from the outside here. England are a top side nowadays on the international stage. Defense against top opposition may be still a little short but with Trent Alexander and Gomez coming through very nicely, the future looks good. With the winter break in the PL, the quality of players coming through the academies and playing in the PL this season, a bit of luck along the way, it won't belong before England wins a trophy.

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6 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Do you think not? He seemed very mature when he arrived at Derby. Of course, he probably developed a lot as a player whilst at Derby, but I'd imagine that a year abroad at the age of 18 is far more of a character-forming experience than a year 100-odd miles up the road at the age of 19.

I think you are right pal he was far too good for the championship when he came. I still think it toughened him up though. God I wish he was still here.

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2 hours ago, Andicis said:

So the crux of your whole argument is the managers before him were crap, so that makes what he's doing amazing? No. It was impossible to do much worse than Hodgson, Capello and McClaren. 

Who was questioning whether we should beat Sweden or Colombia? Neither of those teams are anything special. We made bloody hard work of Colombia too. Why should the past have any weight on current performance? Our players are winning big trophies at club level, and performing well. We should be competing at the top of international football.

Only France and Belgium can argue they have a better squad than us in my opinion. By pure player talent, we should be competing to get into finals and win trophies. If Southgate doesn't get to at least a semi at the Euros, he's failed. Preferably a final minimum. 

Anything less than a semi final is a failure?

I think your estimation and your expectations for this England side are way too high. We are a work in progress. We are improving. We are building. Expecting or asking for too much too soon is only going to lead to disappointment. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Are you forgetting the company we keep at the top table of international football? France are world champions. Portugal are European and Nations League champions. Spain, Germany and Italy have all won major tournaments in the last 15 years. Netherlands and Croatia have both reached major finals. Then there's Belgium who finished 3rd at the last World Cup and beat us comfortably twice along the way. So for you to dismiss Netherlands and Croatia shows a poor grasp of where we are in the international landscape.

We have exciting young talent, we have a strong squad and we have some world class individuals but we are far from alone in that. There is not much that separates the top sides in international football, so I find your confidence in England misplaced. Any of the aforementioned sides could beat us in the throws of tournament football - which is notoriously unpredictable and challenging to navigate.

We are traditionally a side that reaches the quarter finals at best but often it's been much worse, so until we are performing consistently in tournaments and consistently reaching the latter stages, what right do we have to expect to be competing for and winning trophies?

Let Southgate continue the good work without crippling him with undue pressure and expectation. We are better off flying along under the radar.

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3 hours ago, Jourdan said:

Anything less than a semi final is a failure?

I think your estimation and your expectations for this England side are way too high. We are a work in progress. We are improving. We are building. Expecting or asking for too much too soon is only going to lead to disappointment. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Are you forgetting the company we keep at the top table of international football? France are world champions. Portugal are European and Nations League champions. Spain, Germany and Italy have all won major tournaments in the last 15 years. Netherlands and Croatia have both reached major finals. Then there's Belgium who finished 3rd at the last World Cup and beat us comfortably twice along the way. So for you to dismiss Netherlands and Croatia shows a poor grasp of where we are in the international landscape.

We have exciting young talent, we have a strong squad and we have some world class individuals but we are far from alone in that. There is not much that separates the top sides in international football, so I find your confidence in England misplaced. Any of the aforementioned sides could beat us in the throws of tournament football - which is notoriously unpredictable and challenging to navigate.

We are traditionally a side that reaches the quarter finals at best but often it's been much worse, so until we are performing consistently in tournaments and consistently reaching the latter stages, what right do we have to expect to be competing for and winning trophies?

Let Southgate continue the good work without crippling him with undue pressure and expectation. We are better off flying along under the radar.

Why is the last 15 years relevant. No team from 15 years ago is the same. I look at our squad. We're better than Netherlands, Croatia, Germany and Italy. And we should outperform them based off that. You're basing your whole point off history. History has been and gone. What is now is now. I don't care how we did in the past. If we don't start winning, we've underperformed.

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I think you may be overestimating the quality of the England squad in comparison to other nations. We certainly have a good squad but loads of other countries can say that too. Portugal’s bench for example is ridiculous- yesterday they had, Joao Felix , Joao Cancelo, Joao Mourinho, Diogo Jota, Renato Sanches and Ruben Neves all on the bench. 

My worry for this England squad is how easy the group is in comparison to some of the other top international sides. How often have we seen England stroll through the group qualifiers then struggle in the main tournament because it’s a step above what they had been playing against? We are quite fortunate we haven’t really got awkward teams in this group. Germany and Netherlands are in the same group,  Portugal, Ukraine and Serbia are in the same group, Spain have Romania and Sweden in their group, France have Turkey and Iceland in their group, Belgium have Russia in their group.

Whilst some of those teams listed may not be the best of their best, they are certainly in the second tier of teams-horrible and difficult to play against and they make things awkward.

My dark horses for Euro 2020 if they qualify are Turkey. They are a really, really talented team, perhaps the best they’ve had since their Euro 2008 team and we all know when Turkey fans get going and get behind their nation, it’s really, really tough to beat them as France found out.

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