I’m disappointed

[gerrytaggart]

Southgate should have had the bollox to drop Kane. He was a passenger for the last 2 games.  If its not on a plate for him its not happening.

 

Good luck Croatia.

[Koke]

A few points the morning after.

 

1. I know Young have done admirably but Danny Rose is a far superior player and a natural left sided player at that. I understand he was injured but once he got fit I'd start starting him. This isn't hindsight but I said before the Croatia game I'd start Rose. 

 

2. Kane has done brilliantly.  He had to sacrifice his usual game. And you have to remember Spurs midfield and creativity is vastly superior to England. If we had a proper #10 or an Eriksen type player Kane would flourish even more. My respect for Harry Kane as a footballer and captain has gone up a lot.

 

3. John Stones is just a sensational footballer. He was a laughing stock few years ago but he now looks like a mature world class CB. People say Kane is our only world class player but I would add John Stones into that bracket now as well. His composure and intelligence is fantastic.

 

4. Southgate got critics but remember what he did. He realised our defence needed strengthening and our weak midfield a needed beefing up so 352 was the correct way to go about it. His only problem for me is not using subs til 70 or 80 mins. 

 

5. Maguire and Tripper stock have risen enormously. I was previously agnostic about Tripper but he is a class player.

 

6. And lastly, yes it is a success. Going from group stage exist in 2014 to semi final in 2018 is success. You say the opponents were weak but Croatia played Denmark and Russia so does that diminish their success? 

[inckley fox]

We don't help ourselves. After the Panama game the hyperbole of the fairy-tale ending set in; the line-up was set in stone whereas WC winners tend to tweak and develop things as they go along, the nation's narrative was established as 'football coming home', and we failed to notice the fact that we'd beaten two nothing sides, drawn with an extremely average Colombia (minus their best player) and beaten a Swedish side that had performed admirably, but in terms of quality was lacking. We lost to the only two world class sides we played.

 

So, yes, well done for Tunisia, Panama and Sweden, but they're hardly the sort of famous victories World Champions are made of.

[Stadt]

10 hours ago, inckley fox said:

We don't help ourselves. After the Panama game the hyperbole of the fairy-tale ending set in; the line-up was set in stone whereas WC winners tend to tweak and develop things as they go along, the nation's narrative was established as 'football coming home', and we failed to notice the fact that we'd beaten two nothing sides, drawn with an extremely average Colombia (minus their best player) and beaten a Swedish side that had performed admirably, but in terms of quality was lacking. We lost to the only two world class sides we played.

 

So, yes, well done for Tunisia, Panama and Sweden, but they're hardly the sort of famous victories World Champions are made of.

You're right but at the last Euros we drew with Russia and lost to Iceland. The World cup before that we drew with Costa Rica so we've previously not beaten the poor and average sides, then I'd gladly have taken the semi finals in 2018.

 

Our biggest issue is that we don't have a player capable of controlling a game with the ball at their feet, any one of Modric, Rakitic, De Bruyne, Eriksen amongst others would completely change the way we can play.

Edited 12 July 2018 by Stadt

[bovril]

4 minutes ago, Wookie said:

You're right but at the last Euros we drew with Russia and lost to Iceland. The World cup before that we drew with Costa Rica so we've previously not beaten the poor and average sides, then I'd gladly have taken the semi finals in 2018.

 

Our biggest issue is that we don't have a player capable of controlling a game with the ball at their feet any one of Modric, Rakitic, De Bruyne, Eriksen amongst others completely change the way we can play.

Was just going to write the same thing. Souness:
 

Quote

"I want to emphasise the midfield. You can’t win the big trophies, you can’t dominate football matches, you can’t put yourself in a position where you are not giving the ball away unless you’ve got good players in midfield who can keep the ball.

“I come back to Lingard and Dele Alli – two players who want to get on the end of things after there has been clever play by somebody else.

“They don’t want to get involved in keeping the ball and dominating possession."

“They want to be involved in scoring the goals and getting on the end of things."

How many times have we seen England start fast then invite pressure for 45+ minutes? So frustrating. 

Edited 12 July 2018 by bovril

[foxes_rule1978]

Waking up today I thought I would feel even worse but no, we did well and Croatia used their experience and quality to see them through... I’m sure we will be back stronger, this team has a bright future 

[Stadt]

I'm hoping Harry Winks progresses this season as we desperately need a midfielder comfortable playing deeper than our current options.

[ARM1968]

Too many from Spurs. They crumbled like they always do. Trippier being the exception - with Maguire probably the player of the tournament for us. 

 

Ali was poor throughout, but then he has been for most of the last season tbf. 

 

No idea why Kane was on the pitch. He literally offered nothing and even conspired to miss an open goal. 

 

Blew the greatest chance I think most of us will ever see, and yet we did lose to the better team. 

[Royston.]

3 hours ago, Russell sprout said:

I don’t buy all this ‘it’s a success’ bullshit,

weve failed again,

the mentalality kids are brought up on,

such as it’s the taking part that’s counts,

that second best is acceptable,

were england,anything other than success is failure,

Our record in this World Cup is 

won 3,

lost 2,

drew 1(won on penalties)

 

now we we might beat Belgium and come 3rd,we might lose,

that could be 3 defeats in 7 and folk are saying that’s a successful World Cup,

croatia are a solid team,but we’ve really missed an opportunity here imo,

vardy could have scored all the goals Kane did,who again was disappointing,

hes a number 9 who spent most of his time on the half way line

 

 

With the players and managers england have. World cup semi's is a success but we played mediocre teams to get there.

 

As soon as we encountered quality and resilience we were found out.

[foxes_rule1978]

1 hour ago, gerrytaggart said:

Southgate should have had the bollox to drop Kane. He was a passenger for the last 2 games.  If its not on a plate for him its not happening.

 

Good luck Croatia.

It was on a plate for him and he still missed... 

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

One of the most annoying aspects of last night was that the need for a change of shape was obvious - and Southgate essentially admitted that in one of his answers to reporters questions afterwards. 

 

We know only too well how difficult it is to switch a formation when you feel it is working for you... but a braver substitution  and we may have got over the line.

 

It had to be Loftus-Cheek for Sterling (who has flattered to deceive too much - does some great work, but always ****s it up ?).

 

Croatia had found us out, identified our flanks as the weak spot where time on the ball was all day and overloads plentiful. 

 

Yet we effectively did nothing - and the further annoyance, for the goals, defensively we were caught not attacking the ball twice. 

 

Walker... go head it, avert the danger.

 

Stones... go head it, avert the danger.

 

You want to win big prizes... take the criticism, learn from it, come back stronger.

[davieG]

We don't have any world class midfielders to pick from.

 

For too long our academies have focused on speed, strength and stamina with clubs importing ready made risk free skilled midfielders let's hope there's a few of our own in the pipeline that are not just promising but can deliver on the promise

[Manwell Pablo]

i cant really have a bad word to say about losing a World Cup semi final in ET tbh.

 

i would like to think with the age of the team and the success of our youth teams there is more to come.

 

 

[Webbo]

7 minutes ago, Manwell Pablo said:

i cant really have a bad word to say about losing a World Cup semi final in ET tbh.

 

i would like to think with the age of the team and the success of our youth teams there is more to come.

 

 

I think that after every tournament, it's never happened yet.

[Dan LCFC]

Sterling going off was a mistake.

[Manwell Pablo]

4 minutes ago, Webbo said:

I think that after every tournament, it's never happened yet.

 

I don’t see why you would think that after every tournament webbo as we haven’t ever had a team with an average age of 26 get to a World Cup semi final before with under 20 and 17 World Cup wins and a under 19 European cup all also being won in the last two years.

[Webbo]

1 minute ago, Manwell Pablo said:

 

I don’t see why you would think that after every tournament webbo as we haven’t ever had a team with an average age of 26 get to a World Cup semi final before with under 20 and 17 World Cup wins and a under 19 European cup all also being won in the last two years.

I hope that you're right.

[splinterdream]

It needed a tactical change as soon as they equalised, they sussed out that system and played a blinder

[David Hankey]

25 minutes ago, splinterdream said:

It needed a tactical change as soon as they equalised, they sussed out that system and played a blinder

It needed Kane & Lingard to take their goalden opportunities that would have put us 3-0 up and Croatia dead and buried!!

[davieG]

31 minutes ago, splinterdream said:

It needed a tactical change as soon as they equalised, they sussed out that system and played a blinder

...or even before they equalised we were going backwards and had no control of the game well before they equalised.

[SouthStandUpperTier]

1 hour ago, Manwell Pablo said:

 

I don’t see why you would think that after every tournament webbo as we haven’t ever had a team with an average age of 26 get to a World Cup semi final before with under 20 and 17 World Cup wins and a under 19 European cup all also being won in the last two years.

I too hope you're right. But I've a feeling we've just fluffed our best chance in a generation. When are we ever going to be in a semifinal with Italy, Germany, Argentina, Spain and Brazil out of the picture? Those teams are going to learn their lessons. They are going to retool and come back stronger. They are going to play with the raving hump in the next 4 years and we'll know about it. Conversely, we'll (falsely) think we've arrived because we beat Tunisia, Panama and Sweden. Southgate will go on picking roughly the same team in the same formation despite the fact Croatia showed the world the formula to beat it.

[splinterdream]

1 minute ago, davieG said:

...or even before they equalised we were going backwards and had no control of the game well before they equalised.

I sort of agree but changing formation or players when you're 1-nil up opens you up for much criticism, when we look at the Rashford change, it actually made us like worse. The pundits said our wing-backs were pushed back which turned us into 5-1-3-1 with no real outlets or space, if the pundits saw it then maybe Southgate should have and gone 4-4-2.

[davieG]

1 minute ago, splinterdream said:

I sort of agree but changing formation or players when you're 1-nil up opens you up for much criticism, when we look at the Rashford change, it actually made us like worse. The pundits said our wing-backs were pushed back which turned us into 5-1-3-1 with no real outlets or space, if the pundits saw it then maybe Southgate should have and gone 4-4-2.

I think you have to make the changes when the game changes the team had lost motivation to get forward any midfield passing / pressing had gone and we were on the back foot hoofing it out anywhere. Better mangers the Southgate have made early changes when they can see it's not working.

[davieG]

We may have lost to abetter team (technique wise) but we didn't lose because they were a better team, football is awash with better teams being beaten.

 

We lost because we didn't adapt to playing a better team rather we kept the same players, formation and approach that we'd used to beat teams where we could be considered better.

[Manwell Pablo]

12 minutes ago, SouthStandUpperTier said:

I too hope you're right. But I've a feeling we've just fluffed our best chance in a generation. When are we ever going to be in a semifinal with Italy, Germany, Argentina, Spain and Brazil out of the picture? Those teams are going to learn their lessons. They are going to retool and come back stronger. They are going to play with the raving hump in the next 4 years and we'll know about it. Conversely, we'll (falsely) think we've arrived because we beat Tunisia, Panama and Sweden. Southgate will go on picking roughly the same team in the same formation despite the fact Croatia showed the world the formula to beat it.

 

I Dont  think so. I actually think a lot of those teams have a lot of work to do as they have poor sides or are ageing with players close to retiring, the Germans will be back I don’t doubt but Low needs to get a grip his squad selection was arrogant.

 

We still have a lot to do but I think we can improve, I’m hoping more players can really make statement leading up to 2020. obviously most tournaments will be harder than this one but the Croats really are not a bad side and have an array of world class players I struggle to see why they were seen as an easy opportunity for a World Cup semi final.

 

We may never win a major trophy in my lifetime but I am encouraged by what I’ve seen from this group that we can at least compete and entertain and that’s been missing for over a decade for me.