Spain v England

[The_Rev]

Absolutely incredible strike.  

[a m ole]

and Barkley can't hit the target under no pressure just outside the D.

[TheAuthority]

Have England had a shot?

[foreveryoung]

Woy wont win football matches being conservative against the big boys. Has he not learnt anything. We are exactly the same team we were in the world cup, total waste of a football match playing counter attack, an dare I say leaving his sweet heart Rooney out.

[VillaChris]

14 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

Have England had a shot?

England had plenty of shoots but the shooting from people like Barkley from 20 yards out was atricious.

Just looked like a typical Spain-England game , Spain effortlessly controlling possession if a little toothless upfront with the strikers they have now while England just mass defended and could do little with the ball.

Couple of things I can't understand....why isn't Smalling and Stones tried as the central combo, Smalling has been the best English CB for last 6 months and given all the hype over Stones, he can't just continually be benched surely.

What is the point of Adam Lallana, gets hyped up by the likes of Hoddle but I find him a very average player at this level. Infact the whole midfield options currently...Wilshere, Henderson, Carrick, D^^ph, Milner, that's got no chance against top class teams. Personally I'd bin all of them and just play Dier (until someone better as a DM comes up) Dele Ali and Barkley for all his faults as a trio, take whatever bad defeat you get in the euros but build that towards the 2018 world cup.

Sterling ran up so many blind alleys and made the wrong decision with the ball, another who has lost to prove against top level defences despite the price tag.

Nothing we haven't seen before and won't see again so England will be knocked out by the first decent team they play at the euros unless they get very lucky with the draw. These teams control games from central midfield, England just don't have the players for it but it's not even in our football culture so that remains the problem.

[Genie]

Really worrying performance,  it was the same England that were pathetic at the WC. 

Part of the problem is the qualifying phase is too easy and you only get to play top sides once every year or 2 outside of of the tournaments. 

 

[Bradd92]

I enjoyed it, after all the press drumming England up again after qualification saying we're the one of only 2 teams to go through without a loss, i enjoyed watching them be brought back down to reality and how outclassed we are against the upper tier national teams.

[ml1dch]

20 hours ago, Genie said:

Really worrying performance,  it was the same England that were pathetic at the WC. 

 

 

What was worrying about it? Just like qualifying showed that we're better than lots of teams who aren't as good as us, Friday night showed that we're not as good as a team who is better than us. Both of which shouldn't really come as a surprise to anybody. 

It's not something to worry about. 

[dudevillaisnice]

It's not as simple as that. It was more to do with Roy Hodgson learning from his mistakes and how we approach these games under him and this game has shown we haven't really made any meaningful improvements. The game against France will be interesting as they are probably closer to what we should expect improvement on in terms of performance. 

[Genie]

I agree Dude. Worrying that we were never set up to succeed.  Knowing we'd have little of the ball we didn't adapt to it. We just tried to park the bus and hope for a miracle. 

Euros will be WC all over again unless Roy tries something different against the better sides.

[VillaChris]

When was the last time England actually controlled a game in midfield against a decent side in a major tournament out of interest, don't give me they did it against Slovenia or something.

Euro 96 maybe when they smashed Dutch perhaps? Even in the quarter final v Spain they were dominated by then.

The more I think about it it's just not in English football culture to dominate games and endlessly pass the ball around. English history is full of backs to the wall, last ditch tackling, Terry Butcher, Incey heads bandaged etc.

Problem nowadays is there's so much money in Football and people pay so much to watch it they expect better but is a 50m Sterling earning the GDP of a small country really that much better than John Barnes back in the day?

[dudevillaisnice]

Fair point, though Spanish "culture" (tippy tappy precisely) and more recently Germany was not based on history (or atleast I don't think it was). They embraced change again Germany being the more immediate example. I agree on the money issue though, if Premier League is to still continue to be number one in the eyes of the media the national team will continue to suffer as a consequence.

[Stevo985]

The Football Ramble made a good point last week, that England just don't know how to play on the back foot.

England are excellent playing on the front foot against countries they should be beating. It's boring, but we're very good at putting teams in qualifiers to the sword with ease.

But when it comes to playing a team who put us on the back foot and we have to start playing  a bit defensively or on the counter attack, we just don't know how to do it. Hoping Woy can learn slightly from these two friendlies how to do that, but I wouldn't be holding my breath.