JPJCB

He’s been very badly treated by Southgate/England. Why exactly was he dropped when he’s comfortably one of the best English left sided CBs in the PL and never let England down?

He had a decent tournament to be fair. Agree with the OP that he earned the first sub role more than grealish

I’ve seen enough to conclude that he’s reached his ceiling. The press are being extremely kind to England. I’m not baying for blood but for me last night demonstrates the problem with the current set up. To win a tournament you have to beat at least one of the truly top international teams and to do that you have to show ambition. We played ok (better than the euros final at least) but we’re very very passive for long periods of the game without creating much and France stepped up when they needed to step up. (TIFO have done a good video showing how France deliberately let England have the initiative in the periods where they were leading). In the end though the result was completely predictable. I remain of the view that the final/semi final achievements of the last two tournaments were largely literal luck of the draw. If we’d have come up against a France, a Spain, a belgium in the round of 16 we’d have gone out in each of those tournaments and Southgate would have been sacked by now. We all laugh at martinez at belgium but his side beat Brazil 3-0 at the 2018 WC. Can you imagine Southgate pulling that off? No chance. nice guy and a breath of fresh air but he’s reached his ceiling and I’m convinced the outcome will be the same at the next euros if we stick with him. Qualify comfortably; out of the group comfortably. Then knocked out by one of the big boys. Maybe that’s enough for some but I personally want more ambition than that

Agree with your last point. You need a balance in the front 3 of players who want to come towards the ball and players who want to run in behind. Too many of the former and it’s all intricacy but no penetration; too many of the latter and there’s no creativity or poise. Kane is the former alongside grealish, Maddison and foden while rashford, and Sterling are the latter (I think Saka and mount are a bit of a fusion). When Kane is playing you basically have to play at least one of either rashford, Saka or Sterling leaving only one slot at most for a foden or a grealish. The alternative is to drop kane for Wilson who likes to run in behind and stretch the play leaving space for both foden and grealish to support creatively (like they do for City with Haaland playing)

He liked foden at the euros but doesn’t like him now; he didn’t like grealish at the euros but does like him now. He’s changed his mind there for some reason and in any case I’d be nervous about viewing foden as a saviour at this stage: he probably won’t set the world alight him this team. What has been consistent though is southgates love in for mason mount who gets picked for literally 90 mins of every game and does nothing. That annoys me more than anything else. btw, anyone else think that trippier has been (surprisingly) shite so far. I’d drop him for TAA next game

I think more than the values espoused by the Qatari state (which are up to them) it’s the fact that they’re so demonstrably not ready/appropriate to host a World Cup in terms of infrastructure which makes them stand out more than Russia. Not only are they hardly a shining light to the rest of the world in terms of values but,when they were awarded the bid, the infrastructure for hosting didn’t even exist. You’d literally pick 50 or so other countries ahead of them to host. I’ve not even mentioned slave labour element….

The question isn’t whether he was top class or not; it’s whether he was better than zat knight and Curtis Davies who were between them taking up his position. I think he was and history has proved that investing that faith in him over those two at that time would have been well worth the reward. You clearly think differently. Worth also noting that Cahill was exactly the same age as Davies- he was backing one young player over another and got the judgment wrong there was a weird dissonance in that MON interview on this point btw where he goes on to mock Curtis Davies for claiming MON had his favourites when he left. That’s a player who was keeping Cahill out of the side just 2 years beforehand so maybe MON himself actually regrets that decision

Luiz bound to give away his standard penalty against pogba- even though he no longer plays for them

Is that you Jloyd?

Is that you, Jan?

The fact that your best player is our worst player might go against that point mate

To be fair, I think De Zerbi is renowned for his tactical style as much as anything so it’s v on point for Brighton to have got in given that was potter’s unique selling point as well. Comparing to gerrard who doesn’t seem to have any tactical identity is a bit unfair

Agreed- the recent transfers are very obviously gerrard’s and are a notable change of approach from previous years: older and on higher wages. Why would Lange want to sign digne when targett had been performing well for a previous manager? Are we expected to believe that coutinho was lange’s idea?

I’ve no doubt smith would be doing better with this squad than gerrard. He has the right mentality for a start

Is this chart real? Astonishing if so…

First interview question for a new manager should be “do you think McGinn should be in the starting eleven?”. anyone who says yes should be ruled out of the running immediately.

Yeah you might be right. Though I don’t have a huge problem with people thinking he was a great player- he genuinely was right up there. But the correlation between being a great player and a great manager is weak. You raise Pirlo as an example which is instructive- great player, shit manager. from what I’ve seen great managers fall into two camps in terms of background. They’re either complete unknowns/had a very insignificant playing career (mourinho, potter, Ferguson, Klopp) or they reached the top level but in more unsung type roles next to bigger names (Guardiola, pochettino, ancelotti). genuine elite star players tend to make crap managers: see gerrard, lampard, maradona, Henry, pirlo. The one exception I can think of is Zidane who was a great manager and player

My biggest problem continues to be his petty temperament. Sulking on the bench when the chips are down; implying Mings hasn’t got the fight to play in public; snapping at a journalist for suggesting coutinho was out of position. the guy’s a sensitive schmuck who will likely be either in the lower leagues or a crappy pundit in 2-3 years time

The point about integrating him into their first team straight away is interesting. As much as we mock the Chelsea loan factory, I genuinely think a loan move to a lower premier league club so that he can get some regular game time and get used to the pace/physicality of the league is what he needs right now. So I’m even more convinced that this deal isn’t gonna work for him- I’d be surprised if he made many more appearances than he made for us last season given their squad is more stacked

Oh wow- are Chelsea planning to loan those guys out to vitesse too?

As we all know Chelsea are famous for developing young talent and don’t at all have a habit of leaving them to rot in the reserves….

That explains why there might be fewer girls/women playing football in general, but not why there seems to be a racial discrepancy

If you actually read my post you’ll see I’m explicitly *not* saying that they aren’t picked purely based on race. I’m making a point that the number of non-white English players at a top level in the womens game is lower so mathematically it’s likely to be a “whiter” sport.

I’d be interested to see those stats split by class as well where I suspect, sadly, that the proportion of middle class people who are white is more like 90%. And by extension there are a larger proportion of working class people who are black/minority ethnic. That’s a reflection of the structural barriers that people of colour face. I think the class issue is more the driver of why the womens game is so white. My sense is that the womens game is much more middle class in terms of players’ backgrounds so there’s a far larger proportion of white players. Whereas the mens game is a more working class sport and so there’s a disproportionate number of black/mixed race players. that said, the womens team being literally 100%white is still a bit odd