Group D: England, Croatia, Scotland, Czech Republic

[Corky]

Was there any doubt he wouldn't?

 

Kane will play every game unless totally injured.

[HybridFox]

Southgate after another bad team selection

 

 

[Ric Flair]

They need a performance tomorrow night and to take the handbrake off. I've rewatched that game from Friday and it's staggering. 

 

How can you only make 2 subs in that game with the likes of Sancho, DCL, Bellingham and Saka on the bench. I feared he'd pick a squad like this and then not try and use them as much as possible and take advantage of the huge opportunity we have with our options.

 

I've never hated anyone in football as much as Southgate, if we were in League One still and he pitched up as manager I'd be fuming. He is utter dog shit.

[CosbehFox]

Athletic have done an article which suggests the relationship between Grealish and Southgate is fraught. Also referencing that some of the squad think he has favourites. Not a good sign 

[KFS]

54 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Athletic have done an article which suggests the relationship between Grealish and Southgate is fraught. Also referencing that some of the squad think he has favourites. Not a good sign 

You can see it playing out on the pitch. Never rated Southgate. He’s a bum.

[whoareyaaa]

Lingard should be starting after his end of the season performances he would make things happen at least...

 

The formation is just too rigid he needs to drop those two holding players firstly tripper and chilwell should be starting and 3 at the back

 

                    Pickford

 

            Stones Mings Maguire 

Tripper                                       Chilwell

                         Rice

 

     Foden         Mount      Lingard

 

                        Kane

[moore_94]

 

 

[Super_horns]

8 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

 

 

Has he sneaked out of the bubble ?

[Dan]

1 hour ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Athletic have done an article which suggests the relationship between Grealish and Southgate is fraught. Also referencing that some of the squad think he has favourites. Not a good sign 

None of this surprises me. He's made some quite odd moves / statements in the past couple of years. The TAA thing a good example - just really a bit unnecessary.

 

I'll be extremely surprised if we go very far in this. We're through the group bar a disaster but there's a decent chance we get a tricky round of 16 game. Then again Slovakia isn't out the picture  

[Leicester_Loyal]

On 09/06/2021 at 11:55, Dan LCFC said:

Good defences seem to win tournaments. I am no fan of Southgate but you do tend to find in tournaments a lot of the duller sides go far. France were hardly entertainers in Russia and Portugal we all know about. Spain as well were efficient rather than particularly fun.

 

Problem is we don't have a good defence  

 

9 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

None of this surprises me. He's made some quite odd moves / statements in the past couple of years. The TAA thing a good example - just really a bit unnecessary.

 

I'll be extremely surprised if we go very far in this. We're through the group bar a disaster but there's a decent chance we get a tricky round of 16 game. Then again Slovakia isn't out the picture  

 

Back to reality with a bump

[CosbehFox]

14 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Has he sneaked out of the bubble ?

The way they aren’t confirming ‘close contacts’ makes you think that 

[stripeyfox]

10 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

None of this surprises me. He's made some quite odd moves / statements in the past couple of years. The TAA thing a good example - just really a bit unnecessary.

 

I'll be extremely surprised if we go very far in this. We're through the group bar a disaster but there's a decent chance we get a tricky round of 16 game. Then again Slovakia isn't out the picture  

we'll know more tomorrow of course but there are some interesting possibilities regarding our travelling for the next matches depending on our finish in the group and elsewhere

 

If we beat Czech and win the group - we will play runner up of Group F (could be anyone of France/Germany/Portugal/Hungary) at Wembley, then on to Rome for the QF 

 

If we finish second in the group - we will play the runner up of Group E (could be anyone of Sweden/Slovakia/Spain/Poland) in Copenhagen, then on to St Petersburg for the QF

 

If we finish third and the pathway could be

 

Seville > Munich

Glasgow > Rome

Budapest > Baku

 

 

[Dan]

6 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

 

 

Back to reality with a bump

I've never at any point thought we'd go far to be honest.

[Leicester_Loyal]

10 minutes ago, Dan LCFC said:

I've never at any point thought we'd go far to be honest.

I've always thought QFs, can't see  any further than that sadly!

 

We're carrying Kane and Grealish and Sancho aren't going to get hardly any chances.

[Tinman]

38 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

 

 

Fortunately the England squad do not need to isolate as they didn't get within 2m of him

[Super_horns]

2 minutes ago, Tinman said:

Fortunately the England squad do not need to isolate as they didn't get within 2m of him

Even though Lee Dixon was slagging him

off after about 10 minutes !

 

Scotland had a few issues with COVID pre tournament so maybe the bubble isn’t as strong as it ought to be .

[st albans fox]

40 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Has he sneaked out of the bubble ?

They had a couple of cases in their pre tournament training camp but that was surely too long ago for this to be related with no other positives in between 

[escape2victory]

Let the handbrake off and let them play

 

                        Pickford

 

James      Stones    Maguire     Shaw 

     
                          Rice

             Bellingham   Foden 

 

     Sancho          Kane         Grealish

[Sunbury Fox]

2 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Athletic have done an article which suggests the relationship between Grealish and Southgate is fraught. Also referencing that some of the squad think he has favourites. Not a good sign 

Not at all surprised. He's treating Grealish just how he treated Maddison in the past. It's almost like when the public are demanding the inclusion of a certain player, Southgate purposely does the opposite to try to look strong. He's also inherently suspicious of flair players, I think 

 

As for favourites, it's clear that Southgate has them. Going back 18 months or so, Mount was given so many opportunities for England on the back of hardly any PL games. Under the current regine there's a clear bias towards players like him who've come through all of the England age group teams. By contrast, this has stood against the likes of Grealish and Maddison in Southgate's eyes.

[Ric Flair]

End of the day, it's not down to seriously talented players like TAA, Grealish, Sancho, Maddison etc to work out what Southgate expects from them bottom line and change their game to conform.

 

This isn't day to day bread and butter football, it's international football where the manager is appointed to get the best out of the talent pool of players and Southgate is not doing that. I know there's a risk in what I say above, that if certain players can't do what England and the manager expects of them then bollocks to them but it works both ways. If Southgate is honestly going to make his job harder by not picking certain players because of some bizarre conduct criteria he had dating back years to the present day then he should be fcuked off immediately, he is wasting this opportunity of a great group of attacking players. Players that are a result of all the good work the English set up tried to create through the levels several years ago.

 

The bloke is a penis, he should be removed from his position today and face the embarrassment of being sacked mid way through a major tournament, you would see an instant reaction from this squad. We'd be a relentless wave of relief and new found confidence. Sadly we have one of/if not the worst football national bodies and I don't think their main priority is success, they don't really care for that nonsense.

[ClaphamFox]

38 minutes ago, Sunbury Fox said:

Not at all surprised. He's treating Grealish just how he treated Maddison in the past. It's almost like when the public are demanding the inclusion of a certain player, Southgate purposely does the opposite to try to look strong. He's also inherently suspicious of flair players, I think 

 

As for favourites, it's clear that Southgate has them. Going back 18 months or so, Mount was given so many opportunities for England on the back of hardly any PL games. Under the current regine there's a clear bias towards players like him who've come through all of the England age group teams. By contrast, this has stood against the likes of Grealish and Maddison in Southgate's eyes.

The suggestion in the Athletic article is that the main reason Southgate doesn't pick Grealish because he doesn't fully trust him to press and maintain position when England don't have the ball, whereas he trusts Mount to do that. If true, this would reinforce the impression that he's more concerned with avoiding defeat that winning games, which might work during the group stage (and in our case, it is working as we are almost certainly through to the last 16), but clearly won't take you very far in the knockout stage unless your plan is to take every game to penalties and win the shoot-out, which seems a little risky.

 

Obviously Southgate is not going to be sacked two games into a tournament in which we have four points, but if we bomb out in the round of 16 he may consider his position. The question then is who would replace him. I can't think of a single English candidate that I'm confident would do the job much better, and I'm not sure that any of the truly elite foreign coaches would take the job. So who would we end up with?

Edited 21 June 2021 by ClaphamFox

[UniFox21]

 

 

Sterling has 63 caps 

Sancho has 19 caps 

 

Of course Sterling has done more for England with 3x the caps. 

 

 

[StanSP]

Don't know why deletes has to be in capitals, but more to the point, should Mcginn be isolating and unavailable for Scotland tomorrow night then as well? 

Edited 21 June 2021 by StanSP

[filbertway]

8 minutes ago, StanSP said:

Don't know why deletes has to be in capitals, but more to the point, should Mcginn be isolating and unavailable for Scotland tomorrow night then as well? 

Not unless he tests positive I imagine

[Guest Col city fan]

4 hours ago, escape2victory said:

Let the handbrake off and let them play

 

                        Pickford

 

James      Stones    Maguire     Shaw 

     
                          Rice

             Bellingham   Foden 

 

     Sancho          Kane         Grealish

I wouldn’t have Shaw anywhere near the first team. As much as I dislike him, we have the ready made bloke to bomb forward in Chilwell.

I agree about Sancho though, but I’d play Mount rather than Bellingham