Gareth Southgate

[LondonLax]

Southgate doesn’t get England ‘punching above their weight’, though he has them winning the matches you’d expect England to win on paper. 

I’m not his fan but to give him a little credit that is far better than his predecessors managed. I would also suggest this is potentially because international football is a unique set of circumstances/challenges for a football manager. What makes a good club manager doesn’t necessarily translate to international football tournaments.

It’s not actually a guarantee that a new manager takes England forwards from here. 

Edited March 25 by LondonLax

[villarule123]

He should have been sacked after losing the 2021 final the same way as we lost to Croatia in 2018 (sitting back on a 1-0 lead) 

That Italy game was simply unforgivable. A home final where we're winning and playing well, then to sit back on the lead for as long as we did, he should have gone for that. It's only been downhill since then with a poor WC and some humilations - 0-4 against Hungary springs to mind. 

[Greenfly]

Personally, my problem with Southgate isn't to do with his record. My problem is that his England side is so unimaginably dull to watch. To a fan football is entertainment, and there's nothing entertaining about his tactics.

[JPJCB]

9 hours ago, LondonLax said:

Southgate doesn’t get England ‘punching above their weight’, though he has them winning the matches you’d expect England to win on paper. 

I’m not his fan but to give him a little credit that is far better than his predecessors managed. I would also suggest this is potentially because international football is a unique set of circumstances/challenges for a football manager. What makes a good club manager doesn’t necessarily translate to international football tournaments.

It’s not actually a guarantee that a new manager takes England forwards from here. 

I think this is a fair post particularly your last para- I’m not sure there’s an obviously better alternative other than someone like Potter. I always thought Deano would be a great option tbh but can’t imagine broad support for that in the country. 
 

Id caveat this bit though. He might be modestly better than his peers but the whole point of people highlighting his poor record against “top sides” is that we ARE better on paper than a lot of them. We were better than Croatia, better than Italy, better than Brazil the other night. And yet he plays into an underdog type mentality and plays unambitious cautious football every single time. People suggest we played well against France in the last WC. I remember watching that game and thinking France barely got out of second gear. When they needed to score they did so, and when they wanted to take the game by the scruff of the neck, that’s exactly what they did. Meanwhile we huffed and puffed barely creating anything and benefitting from two penalties 

[villa4europe]

59 minutes ago, JPJCB said:

I think this is a fair post particularly your last para- I’m not sure there’s an obviously better alternative other than someone like Potter. I always thought Deano would be a great option tbh but can’t imagine broad support for that in the country. 

as someone who largely thinks international football at that level is about putting round pegs in round holes, giving the players a tickle and then sending them out to kick a ball with a smile on their face i think deano would be a great option whereas potter wouldn't be, managers simply don't have the time with the players to be overly tactical, same with the likes of klopp and pep they don't spend enough time with the squad for their infectious personality to carry, i hate to say it but its why redknapp should have got the gig, the players would have enjoyed playing for him 

its probably also why there aren't really any top table managers in international football anymore too

[PaulC]

13 hours ago, villa4europe said:

I think the golden generation had a lot of problems that these players don't, mainly they were "world class" Premier league players and international football is not the Premier league, Gerrard in particular with the any team in the world nonsense was like no one was watching barca and Spain dominate with a complete different brand of football, I think this group of players don't have that problem, the 2 star players already play abroad and a few more of them could too (if the PL money wasn't so good) 

And that's before you then factor in those players mostly never came close to replicating their club performances at International level 

The only thing the golden gen had was a more rounded squad, Southgate hasnt got a defence, his squads are top heavy 

Kane as England's best ever striker is definitley a debate, he'll end up as England's top scorer, would have beaten shearers PL record if he'd stayed, again I don't think many English strikers in my lifetime go to Bayern and do what he's done, shearer doesn't his game was too English, kane does genuinely walk in to any team in the world and score a lot of goals 

But all that doesn't matter, I don't believe that looking back at the golden generation or previous generations and saying they had better squads is an excuse, Southgate has the players, it's the quality of the players that is getting us through not the quality of the manager, they are doing it in spite of him not because of him

Fair points, you make a very good case. Football is.different in the Premier League with a much more modern approach. Players are technically superior to their predecessors. Southgate sticking with Macguire borders on insanity. Same with Henderson Post Saudi. It wouid be good to see a proper manager being in charge of this group of players. I think in Bellingham he has the outstanding player in world football in a year or two. 

[Genie]

My son (13) is football mad. Lives and breathes it. Plays for 2 teams. Fifa every second of the day in his room. Champions Lesgue, Premier League he can’t get enough of it and constantly asks me to take him to even more games. Goes to watch Tamworth at home with his mates every time they play.

But he won’t watch England as it’s so painfully boring. Neither do his mates. They completely ignore the games and play FIFA together instead.

A lot of that is on Southgate.

[bobzy]

16 minutes ago, Genie said:

My son (13) is football mad. Lives and breathes it. Plays for 2 teams. Fifa every second of the day in his room. Champions Lesgue, Premier League he can’t get enough of it and constantly asks me to take him to even more games. Goes to watch Tamworth at home with his mates every time they play.

But he won’t watch England as it’s so painfully boring. Neither do his mates. They completely ignore the games and play FIFA together instead.

A lot of that is on Southgate.

I was similar as a kid… international football (outside of tournaments) just never appealed to me. I’ve always enjoyed club football and used to love watching Barcelona (in particular); would always have favourite individual players but friendlies etc were dull.

Tournaments are different, though. Presumably your lad is looking forward to Euro 2024?

 

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Tournaments are different, though. Presumably your lad is looking forward to Euro 2024?

He hasn’t mentioned it, I don’t think he looks that far forward. I’m sure he’ll watch the games, at least if/when they get out of the group.

[Stevo985]

12 hours ago, LondonLax said:

Southgate doesn’t get England ‘punching above their weight’, though he has them winning the matches you’d expect England to win on paper. 

I’m not his fan but to give him a little credit that is far better than his predecessors managed. I would also suggest this is potentially because international football is a unique set of circumstances/challenges for a football manager. What makes a good club manager doesn’t necessarily translate to international football tournaments.

It’s not actually a guarantee that a new manager takes England forwards from here. 

I'm not saying this to be contrary, because I do largely agree with your post. I give Southgate that credit too.

But if anyone has read "Why England Lose", it's basically a book which largely looks at why England underachieve in tournaments (Or used to anyway, the book is 15 years old now).
The conclusion in that book is basically that they don't. England didn't underachieve, they basically achieved around what a team of that level should be achieving. Quarter final exits at major tournaments in the 90s and 2000s was about where England were. The possible exception being Euro 2004 which is a tournament we genuinely could, and maybe should, have won.

The problem was more the expectations were much higher. We thought we should be winning tournaments when we really weren't good enough.
 

So I think I slightly disagree with your first sentence. I agree Southgate doesn't get England punching above their weight, but I'd argue he doesn't have England punching AT their weight.
I think the problem is this squad is good enough to win a championship. And if he doesn't do that then he's got us punching below our weight.

The major change with this team is the ability of the squad. Southgate has done an ok job in getting some results out of that, but it's capable of more, and Southgate is holding us back from achieving that

[Genie]

27 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

The problem was more the expectations were much higher. We thought we should be winning tournaments when we really weren't good enough.

It’s easy to say we got out of it what we should have. It could be applied to any team of the past.

I think England massively under achieved in the past. Individually we had some immense talents which didn’t work as a unit for whatever reason (failure of the managers).

This team was a ridiculously good set of players. It would not have been a surprise if they had cleaned up several major honours. The weak link being David James is arguably better than Pickford today.

Back on Southgate though I think overall he’s there or thereabouts (to quote a not very wise man). The main issue is that it’s so hard to watch, combined with tactical naivety when it gets to the really big games. I said before, I’d trade an exciting brand of football getting the most out of talents like Foden, Saka, Grealish, Bellingham, Kane etc over the shite, safety first rubbish he usually serves up even if it didn’t win anything (no change there).

[Stevo985]

14 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’s easy to say we got out of it what we should have. It could be applied to any team of the past.

I think England massively under achieved in the past. Individually we had some immense talents which didn’t work as a unit for whatever reason (failure of the managers).

This team was a ridiculously good set of players. It would not have been a surprise if they had cleaned up several major honours. The weak link being David James is arguably better than Pickford today.

 

I did have the caveat in my post of Euro 2004. I do think that's a tournament we should have won and is probably the only example really of big underachievement. The odd team could have maybe got a round or two further, but I don't think we've ever had tournament winning teams in our liftimes. I absolutely disagree that they should have "cleaned up several major honours". That's a huge exaggeration. They were good enough to win a Euros, that's about it. There wasn't the depth in that squad that we have today, for example.

Is there really a massively underachieving team in there outside of Euro 2004? I'm not sure there is. 

I think the issue is we never OVER achieve. Even Italia 90 and Euro 96 which were big nearly moments, weren't exactly giant killing tournament runs. The hardest opponents we beat in those tournaments were a very average Spain side in 96. Most decent international teams can point to good tournaments in the last 30-40 years where they've pulled out some huge results and beat teams that are better than them and had a glorious runs. 

We can't do that. We never beat big teams in tournaments. Germany in Euro 2020 is literally the only time that's happened and even then as we've discusses it wasn't a particularly good Germany team

 

 

However the problem with Southgate isn't that he's not overachieving, it's that he's not even achieving. Previously we've never managed to be greater than the sum of our parts. But with Southgate we're less than the sum of our parts. That's the frustration

 

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I did have the caveat in my post of Euro 2004. I do think that's a tournament we should have won and is probably the only example really of big underachievement. The odd team could have maybe got a round or two further, but I don't think we've ever had tournament winning teams in our liftimes. I absolutely disagree that they should have "cleaned up several major honours". That's a huge exaggeration. They were good enough to win a Euros, that's about it. There wasn't the depth in that squad that we have today, for example.

We’d have to disagree on that mid-00’s side. It was a collection of world class individuals in every position (apart from GK) in their prime. 

The fact this team didn’t win a knockout game was criminal.

As has come out since though, the England management failed to integrate the players of different clubs and there were a lot of rifts and cliques behind the scenes. 
From what we know it seems less of an issue now, maybe we’ll hear more after Southgate has gone. Ben White will probably have something to say at least.

[Stevo985]

40 minutes ago, Genie said:

We’d have to disagree on that mid-00’s side. It was a collection of world class individuals in every position (apart from GK) in their prime. 

The fact this team didn’t win a knockout game was criminal.

As has come out since though, the England management failed to integrate the players of different clubs and there were a lot of rifts and cliques behind the scenes. 
From what we know it seems less of an issue now, maybe we’ll hear more after Southgate has gone. Ben White will probably have something to say at least.

Yeah but what's the depth like? You need depth to win a tournament.

I do agree they should have won Euro 2004. But I think saying they should have won several tournaments is an exaggeration 

[VillaJ100]

The reason we never won anything 90's and 2000's is between 94-2010ish the team was full of a bunch of self absorbed rocket polishers who let their club rivalries overshadow the national team to it's massive detriment. The players of that time have even started admitting as much, the man U players wouldn't eat or talk with the Liverpool ones etc, absolutely pathetic behaviour and if I was the manager I'd have binned them off home and said to the press why, and chose players who didn't act like 10 year olds.

[Genie]

6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Yeah but what's the depth like? You need depth to win a tournament.

It looks decent

Quote

Full England squad:
Goalkeepers: David James (Manchester City), Paul Robinson (Tottenham), Ian Walker (Leicester City).
Defenders: Wayne Bridge and John Terry (both Chelsea), Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole (both Arsenal), Jamie Carragher (Liverpool), Gary and Phil Neville (both Manchester United).
Midfielders: Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes (both Manchester United), Joe Cole and Frank Lampard (both Chelsea), Kieron Dyer (Newcastle), David Beckham (Real Madrid), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Owen Hargreaves (Bayern Munich).
Strikers: Michael Owen and Emile Heskey (both Liverpool), Wayne Rooney (Everton), Darius Vassell (Aston Villa)

The bench would have had a couple of ok-ish keepers.

Bridge, Carragher, Phil Neville in defence.

Butt, Joe Cole, Dyer & Owen Hargreaves in midfield 

Heskey and Vassell up front, whilst not great at least at their peaks.

 

[Genie]

11 minutes ago, VillaJ100 said:

The reason we never won anything 90's and 2000's is between 94-2010ish the team was full of a bunch of self absorbed rocket polishers who let their club rivalries overshadow the national team to it's massive detriment. The players of that time have even started admitting as much, the man U players wouldn't eat or talk with the Liverpool ones etc, absolutely pathetic behaviour and if I was the manager I'd have binned them off home and said to the press why, and chose players who didn't act like 10 year olds.

I think one of the fundamental jobs as national team manager is not to make the players better (like a club manager) but to morph the players from several clubs into a team. The late 90’s into the 2000’s the England management completely failed in this regard. Players can take some of the blame, but the coaching staff should have done better (or as you say, those that failed to integrate should have been cast aside).

We will never know all the ins and outs but I think it looks less of a problem these days in general. Players just don’t have the same rivalry any more. They’re happy to have a bit of a laugh walking off the field chatting to opposition players.

Edited March 26 by Genie

[Stevo985]

5 minutes ago, Genie said:

It looks decent

The bench would have had a couple of ok-ish keepers.

Bridge, Carragher, Phil Neville in defence.

Butt, Joe Cole, Dyer & Owen Hargreaves in midfield 

Heskey and Vassell up front, whilst not great at least at their peaks.

 

That's an absolute gulf of talent between the first team and the subs.

Joe Cole, Hargreaves and Heskey are the only players on that list who were decent for England

[DJBOB]

In a lot of ways, the Southgate discourse reminds me a lot of the Moyes discourse (and relatively true for a lot of English managers in general).

High floor, low ceiling. He can bring a team together, good cohesiveness, toxic behavior in the dressing room is relatively nil.

But on the pitch, he manages like Moyes with the exception that he has better talent than almost every squad bar may be five in the world.

And as a result - it looks like shit most of the time...because it is shit. Defensive, controlling, keep the game tight - score off set pieces and counters and etc.

I don't think anyone is asking for Pep ball but it was a night and day difference between Southgate and say Scaloni or Deschamps, who can make tactical adjustments from match to match or even during the match.

[Genie]

Just now, Stevo985 said:

That's an absolute gulf of talent between the first team and the subs.

Joe Cole, Hargreaves and Heskey are the only players on that list who were decent for England

That’s normal for all teams isn’t it? The England first 11 is packed with superstars, far more than we’ve seen. There will obviously be a big drop off when the first team is so strong. The fact the bench is still stacked with first team players from United, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Newcastle (when they were good) etc is a strong sign.