What's new

The England World Cup Thread

LexingtonSpurs

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2013
13,456
39,042
This is a follow-up to a discussion I had on a different board:

What English players would you say played consistently well over the course of the Tournament?

I came up with 4:

1. Trippier - easily the best English player this tournament
2. Maguire
3. Pickford
4. Stones


That is not enough consistently good players to win at this level - particularly when none are in attack.
 

LexingtonSpurs

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2013
13,456
39,042
I'm slightly worried about our centre backs.

Only going to be Foyth and CCV available for pre-season, though hopefully Sanchez gets a game in before the opening day.
Sanchez should be back when the squad returns from America - that will give him one pre-season match. If I had to guess, he would pair with Foyth against Newcastle, with Jan slotting back in against Fulham.
 

SdB

Well-Known Member
Aug 23, 2013
1,367
1,878
This is a follow-up to a discussion I had on a different board:

What English players would you say played consistently well over the course of the Tournament?

I came up with 4:

1. Trippier - easily the best English player this tournament
2. Maguire
3. Pickford
4. Stones


That is not enough consistently good players to win at this level - particularly when none are in attack.

Top 3 yes. Stones hmmmm, too many mistakes
 

Metalhead

But that's a debate for another thread.....
Nov 24, 2013
25,351
38,294
Yeah probably, he has to do alot of dog work at spurs too as he's often alone depending on who we're playing.

It could the cumulative ankle injuries that's doing him all so , taking away something each time.
All that continued ligament damage is really bad
I get that if Poch wants to play one up front then we can't get a top notch striker to come in and sit on the fence but equally, the last couple of backups in Jansen and Llorente have not worked out so, I don't know what the answer is but every time Kane gets injured, we all panic. So far we have been lucky and the other players have weighed in when he has been out but it's so difficult to rest him for very long because, we are always going to turn to him if we are in the sh#t during a game. I'm sort of rambling a bit but essentially for a club that has ambitions to challenge on so many fronts, I feel like we should be able to recruit a decent backup.
 

Archibald&Crooks

Aegina Expat
Admin
Feb 1, 2005
55,533
204,720
There's a thread in Spurs Chat about World Cup Burn Out (please use it), this is the England World Cup Thread.

Locked for a short while because asking generally doesn't do much good, we'll be open again soon. Thanks.
 

parj

NDombelly ate all the pies
Jul 27, 2003
3,586
5,861
Yep hoddle sees it but is being kind. Kane has been pretty bad all tournament pens aside

Hope janssen is looking mbappe'ish in training :S
Cause Kane looks like he needs a total refresh

Kane was brilliant against Colombia.
 

Shadydan

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2012
38,247
104,143
Yep hoddle sees it but is being kind. Kane has been pretty bad all tournament pens aside

Hope janssen is looking mbappe'ish in training :S
Cause Kane looks like he needs a total refresh

Sigh...

He was playing a different role for England, didn't have any service so sacrificed himself for the team, he not going to look as bad as that at Spurs because we play to his strengths.
 

theShiznit

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2004
17,799
23,813
Hope England haven't broken Kane.

I think sterling passed once to him whole tournament... (No wonder he snatched at it)

England have no idea how to use Kane, look at the goals he gets for us from all over the pitch, all he was ever likely to score for England was tap in's or headers.

One world class player so let's limit him to get the best out of Sterling and Lingard.
Sterling was abysmal all tournament never passed just wanted to do it all himself and just ended up doing nothing, and Lingard wasn't much better.

Hoddle can say Kane wasn't making the runs but you can only make so many unfound runs before you think fuck this for a game of soldiers.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
39,837
50,713
This is a follow-up to a discussion I had on a different board:

What English players would you say played consistently well over the course of the Tournament?

I came up with 4:

1. Trippier - easily the best English player this tournament
2. Maguire
3. Pickford
4. Stones


That is not enough consistently good players to win at this level - particularly when none are in attack.


Especially as there isn't anyone ahead of the defence (except maybe Trippier who as a WB is hybrid defender/midfielder/attacker) in that list. I'd say Henderson was decent until the Croatia game, but only in functional way, he's not the way forward either.

I'd say the best of the front 5 players was Sterling, despite the shit he got, because one of England's biggest problems is the lack of intelligent movement, giving whoever's on the ball options, and Sterling was easily the best at that, no one had more touches in the opposition's half/third than Sterling. I doubt anyone in that England team covered more ground either.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
39,837
50,713
England were abysmal first half, but Belgium weren't much better, and did exactly what the likes of Courtois and Hazard whined about France doing in their semi-final and just stopped playing completely, passively sat back and if they'd have conceded it would have served them right. As it was, they mostly just had to watch Stones pass the ball 437 times to RLC. England did have a little purple patch for about 15 minutes, but this momentum was killed by Kane, Dier, RLC and then Jones waving Belgium through to score a second.

The most glaring problem for England, and has been all along, is their lack of ability to transition through midfield, hardly surprising given the players in the squad. I think Southgate should have taken at least Lallana, maybe even Wiltshire too. I just don't understand RLC, I can see he has technique and some ability but what does he do ? What is he? He's not a 6, he's not a metronomic 8, he's not a Pogba 8, he doesn't move the ball particularly quickly or particularity incisively, he seems to want to hang on to it, but he's not really a dribbler either. Non plussed. I think Lingard is a lively ****, but much of it is just smoke and fucking mirrors, and asking him to be an 8 was always going to be flawed as soon as you played teams with actual midfields. I said this before the tournament, this isn't wise-arse hindsight. I can understand Alli playing as the other 8, he's kind of done it for us (not always brilliantly), and he is more likely to do something creative or productive. But if you play him, then the other 8 needs to be more of a proper midfield "6/8" than Lingard.

The next major issue is movement off the ball when in possession, it's pretty fucking abysmal. And along with the inability to transition, creatively, is why England create so few tangible chances in games. And this is why Sterling is playing every game right now, because he's the only player constantly moving and showing and facilitating any kind of transition. I think for the last couple of years Lallana has been England's best player, for similar reasons, his technique and movement means he's always available and can take the ball in tight spaces and play, transition. Kane did it well against Columbia, but was poor in all other games, and was for Spurs for the last few months of the season.

Transition (both direction) and movement are the two cornerstones of good football, and this is fundamental if England are to become genuine contenders. Having good, intelligent, footballers in midfield help this enormously, which England are short of right now, but you still need to have endemic "footballing" ethos. It will help you protect leads, it will help you control games and phases of games. As we saw with the Croatia game, there wasn't much between the two teams really, just one team had a better endemic footballing ethos (and a midfield to impart it) that they could rely on when the chips were down.

I think Southgate's in game management was pretty poor. But then he's never been a great manager, failed as a club manager, he completely fucked up the last (U21) tournament he managed (with a very promising group of players, including some of this current group). But he's at least proved a conduit for a fresh and honest approach. He's quietly shoved out the old egos, and created a good team spirit, which is not to be sniffed at, you can see this team has some decent intentions, and lets be clear, most international managers are there because they can't get decent jobs with clubs. By their very nature, they are invariably flawed coaches, as we have seen this World Cup, many of the world's leading football nations are suffering issues of various kinds. Germany (Low - never managed top flight) couldn't put together a team to match an ethos, Spain (a journey man manager quits and is temporarily replaced by the admin guy) have one intense style of play that encourages a every opponent to park a bus, Belgium (nincompoop who relegated one club then failed at Everton) bananas squad/team selections, France (Deschamps) are like a Ferrari being driven by a granny.

There's a really good crop of players emerging, if they can get games and get integrated, I think there could be some interesting times ahead, but they've got to make "playing football" a more endemic thing, not just something they do when allowed to.
 

DuDe

Well-Known Member
Jun 23, 2007
7,049
3,950
Absolutely.

Should still be there, though.

Croatia bent over for the first 2/3 of our game with them and we should have went in dry.

I just don't understand why people cannot see this.

Game could have been over after 30 minutes, but with Young being the weak-link in that half and us not being able to make best of those chances, we started losing focus.

They got back into it later in the 2nd half. Took ages for their dominating 'Mod-field' to finally takeover, and when it did, that was mainly down to us playing poor, running out of gas and running out of ideas. We handed them the momentum.
 

DCSPUR

Well-Known Member
Apr 15, 2005
3,918
5,415
Croat keeper doesn't make a worldie save from Kane, we go 2-0 up.
We are in the final and even the hints of negativity are gone.
Good tournament - well played Southgate. Squad did fine. Missed a fully fit Winks but hopefully he will be starting CM for club and country going forward (along with Dier).
 

nailsy

SC Supporter
Jul 24, 2005
30,536
46,628
I know that 98% won’t agree with me and this is not a overreaction but I think England could do with a better manager than Southgate. He never changes the system in game, his team doesn’t press, play too slow, doesn’t create many chances from open play. That’s just my opinion

The issue with that is that when the job was available no one else wanted it. Even Southgate didn't want it, but he accepted the job out of a sense of loyalty.
 

spursfan77

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2005
46,679
104,956
I know that 98% won’t agree with me and this is not a overreaction but I think England could do with a better manager than Southgate. He never changes the system in game, his team doesn’t press, play too slow, doesn’t create many chances from open play. That’s just my opinion

I agree he’s not a good tactical manager but he’s a good people manager. Maybe he just needs better coaches around him to make the tactical decisions. Or he needs to be the number two to a person who is. Or he just learns to get better tactically. He’s still a young guy and inexperienced coaching wise. He’s got less experience than Poch who I still class as a fairly inexperience coach because of his age and coaching background. Southgate has less than him. Middlesbrough and England u21s is nothing.
 

ClonedFromSandrosBeard

Well-Known Member
Jul 21, 2014
181
417
I agree he’s not a good tactical manager but he’s a good people manager. Maybe he just needs better coaches around him to make the tactical decisions. Or he needs to be the number two to a person who is. Or he just learns to get better tactically. He’s still a young guy and inexperienced coaching wise. He’s got less experience than Poch who I still class as a fairly inexperience coach because of his age and coaching background. Southgate has less than him. Middlesbrough and England u21s is nothing.


I think he is a decent tactician or at least listens to tacticians. He knew he didn't have the players to go toe to toe with the better midfields in the world and so he didn't try.

At the end of the 3rd/4th he said he tried to maximise what we have which is a good way to look at it. I don't think we'll see this system in 2020.
 
Top