Gareth Southgate

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

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.

I don't think it's normal for teams who would "clean up several major honours" no

[LondonLax]

England 2010 WC - win one match (scraping past slovenia) to get pumped by Germany in the round of 16. 

England 2014 WC - win no matches and out of the tournament after round 2 of the group stages. 

2008 England couldn’t even qualify for the Euros.

It’s not hard to imagine Southgate doing better with those tournaments. 

Edited March 26 by LondonLax

[Stevo985]

9 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

England 2010 WC - win one match (scraping past slovenia) to get pumped by Germany in the round of 16. 

England 2014 WC - win no matches and out of the tournament after round 2 of the group stages. 

2008 England couldn’t even qualify for the Euros.

It’s not hard to imagine Southgate doing better with those tournaments. 

Agreed on 2008 and 2014

I don't think that England team beats 2010 Germany regardless of who is manager

[LondonLax]

Just now, Stevo985 said:

Agreed on 2008 and 2014

I don't think that England team beats 2010 Germany regardless of who is manager

It wouldn’t surprise me if a manager like Southgate would have topped that group in 2010 and avoided having to play Germany in the first knockout round. 

Instead a very average USA side top the group and got an average Ghana in the knockout. 

[Stevo985]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

It wouldn’t surprise me if a manager like Southgate would have topped that group in 2010 and avoided having to play Germany in the first knockout round. 

Instead a very average USA side top the group and got an average Ghana in the knockout. 

Yeah that's fair. I'm not as confident (I think the England team from 2010 to around 2016 just got worse and worse) but it's not a mad suggestion.

However I don't think they would have got much further. 2010 for example if we'd topped the group we'd get Ghana and the Uruguay. I doubt we'd win both of those games, so it's still a QF exit

[LondonLax]

9 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Yeah that's fair. I'm not as confident (I think the England team from 2010 to around 2016 just got worse and worse) but it's not a mad suggestion.

However I don't think they would have got much further. 2010 for example if we'd topped the group we'd get Ghana and the Uruguay. I doubt we'd win both of those games, so it's still a QF exit

So to summarise, we all agree England underachieved in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and 2016 (I had forgotten them losing to Iceland ) then Southgate shows up in 2018 and suddenly they are making semifinals and finals of major tournaments. 

Edited March 26 by LondonLax

[Stevo985]

12 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

So to summarise, we all agree England underachieved in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and 2016 (I had forgotten them losing to Iceland ) then Southgate shows up in 2018 and suddenly they are making semifinals and finals of major tournaments. 

I don't think England particularly underachieved in 2008 to 2016, no.

I think there's an argument we could have done better in some of those tournaments, but I think we're talking fine margins.

We were terrible in 2014 for example, and could have easily been better, but I don't think Gareth Southgate is getting us out of that group, and plenty other managers would have struggled as well by the way. That was such a poor England side. So we'd still exit at the group stage.
2016 we should be beating Iceland but we're not getting past the QFs so we're talking one round more. It's not like we could have won the tournament in the same away as we could have in 2004

2010 we go out at the same stage unless we won the group in which case we probably go out in the QFs instead. Again we're not a tournament winning team

 

The difference now is the team is good enough to win tournaments, and we're not doing it. Again Southgate derserves some credit, I've never said otherwise. Getting us to semi finals and finals is still nothing to sniff at. But a slightly better manager would have delivered a trophy by now.

Yeah you could argue he's underachieving by the same margin previous managers underachieved by. But now the cost of underachieving isn't missing out on a quarter final, it's missing out on a trophy. So naturally that stings more

Edited March 26 by Stevo985

[Zatman]

1 hour 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 a lot of them players were overrated by the media and were found out against better technical opponents.

2nd part was Fergie then Wenger and Mourinho was pretty much destroying any morale by installing attitudes among the players

[LondonLax]

4 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I don't think England particularly underachieved in 2008 to 2016, no.

I think there's an argument we could have done better in some of those tournaments, but I think we're talking fine margins.

We were terrible in 2014 for example, and could have easily been better, but I don't think Gareth Southgate is getting us out of that group, and plenty other managers would have struggled as well by the way. That was such a poor England side. So we'd still exit at the group stage.
2016 we should be beating Iceland but we're not getting past the QFs so we're talking one round more. It's not like we could have won the tournament in the same away as we could have in 2004

2010 we go out at the same stage unless we won the group in which case we probably go out in the QFs instead. Again we're not a tournament winning team

 

The difference now is the team is good enough to win tournaments, and we're not doing it. Again Southgate derserves some credit, I've never said otherwise. Getting us to semi finals and finals is still nothing to sniff at. But a slightly better manager would have delivered a trophy by now.

Yeah you could argue he's underachieving by the same margin previous managers underachieved by. But now the cost of underachieving isn't missing out on a quarter final, it's missing out on a trophy. So naturally that stings more

I don’t think you can expect to win a tournament and claim he has underperformed by not. Losing the final against Italy at Wembley is the only match that sticks out at a tournament and it was on very fine margins.

England 2018 was virtually the same squad who were humiliated by Iceland so perhaps he overachieved in that tournament? In Qatar they went out to my pre tournament favourite in France (again on fine margins with your captain and best player missing a penalty). I don’t think you should claim he underachieved in Qatar. 

So, as you yourself noted, England should have gone further than they did in tournaments from 2004-2016 but since Southgate I would argue they have been going about as far as you’d expect them to (with a frustrating penalty shootout loss in the 2020 final being the biggest disappointment). 

[Stevo985]

28 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I don’t think you can expect to win a tournament and claim he has underperformed by not. Losing the final against Italy at Wembley is the only match that sticks out at a tournament and it was on very fine margins.

England 2018 was virtually the same squad who were humiliated by Iceland so perhaps he overachieved in that tournament? In Qatar they went out to my pre tournament favourite in France (again on fine margins with your captain and best player missing a penalty). I don’t think you should claim he underachieved in Qatar. 

So, as you yourself noted, England should have gone further than they did in tournaments from 2004-2016 but since Southgate I would argue they have been going about as far as you’d expect them to (with a frustrating penalty shootout loss in the 2020 final being the biggest disappointment). 

I guess I'm sort of predicting the future in assuming we won't win the Euros in the summer.

Which isn't very fair of me, I'll admit that. But it is using past performances to predict that, going back to the stat that he struggles when the chips are down against big teams

If that happens then I think we've gone through 3 tournaments with a squad good enough to win a trophy and not won one. I guess that's what frustrates me.

 

I fully admit that's slightly unfair of me, and if he proves me wrong and wins the Euros then I'll kiss his feet and apologise

[HanoiVillan]

42 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

England 2018 was virtually the same squad who were humiliated by Iceland so perhaps he overachieved in that tournament?

It was arguably a worse squad that went to Russia, but not much in it either way:

11 of the same players, and most of the other changes (I tried to put them like-for-like, but Southgate took an additional defender instead of an attacker) are much of a muchness. Most of the swaps are squad players who didn't get much if any pitch time in either tournament, with the glaring downgrade of not having Rooney this time. 

In the run-up to 2018, very little was expected from that squad. In the immediate aftermath, absolutely everybody felt that England had over-achieved given the squad available. Now, I understand, a national team manager remains in place for a long time and everyone gets fed up with them, but there's some re-writing of history happening if people are going to insist that England suddenly should have been challenging for the tournament with basically the same side as 2 years prior. 

One frustrating aspect of the debate is that people assert that England's squad is massively better now, without considering whether any part of that appraisal is actually *because* they've done better at tournaments than they used to. I'm not saying that's all the difference - in particular, Kane is a genuine difference, a truly world-class striker who really does it for England - but nobody ever seems to even consider it. 

[StefanAVFC]

In 2018, when we lost, there wasn't the annoyance with Southgate I admit. People were elated to reach a semi final, and gutted we didn't make it. I travelled Europe that summer and watched us beat Colombia in Vienna and Sweden at the Brandenburg Gate. It was glorious.

The issue is, starting 2021, when we lost the Italy game with exactly the same issues. Sitting on a 1-0 lead.

That's excluding other games we either lost, or drew due to the same thing. Both in tournaments and in 'meaningless' games.

The issue is that this ultra-cautious, dull football has become a trend. He either can't play another way or doesn't want to. And when you play ultra safe 1-0, or not lost at all costs football with arguably the best striker in the world, 4/5 POTS candidates from the PL and the future best player in the world, then people will rightfully question. 

Add to that his nonsense with Villa players specifically and I cannot stand him.

[bobzy]

6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

In the run-up to 2018, very little was expected from that squad. In the immediate aftermath, absolutely everybody felt that England had over-achieved given the squad available. Now, I understand, a national team manager remains in place for a long time and everyone gets fed up with them, but there's some re-writing of history happening if people are going to insist that England suddenly should have been challenging for the tournament with basically the same side as 2 years prior. 

One frustrating aspect of the debate is that people assert that England's squad is massively better now, without considering whether any part of that appraisal is actually *because* they've done better at tournaments than they used to. I'm not saying that's all the difference - in particular, Kane is a genuine difference, a truly world-class striker who really does it for England - but nobody ever seems to even consider it. 

I don't think England should have been challenging for the World Cup in 2018; and we weren't.  We failed to beat every decent team in front of us.  That we happened to get to the semi-final is because we didn't meet a decent side until we hit Croatia and we lost.  Croatia are hardly a mega nation either - they had been overperforming.  We were on a side of the draw that avoided all of France, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Belgium (already beaten us in the group) and I'd argue Uruguay are a stronger outfit than Croatia. We played the most favourable group winner possible in Colombia and still failed to beat them (penalties to go through).  No nuance is considered here; we just see "Southgate gets England to semi-final".  This is very much hindsight, though.  There was an absolute love-in with Southgate after this tournament; to a point I can't remember any other England manager having had the same backing...

...this continues to 2020 which sees an emergence of a whole host of genuinely world class attacking players breathing life into the England side.  We're at home - largely - and have Grealish (finally) coming into the setup with Foden, Saka and Sancho (Dortmund version) in other attacking positions whilst having a more experienced Rashford and Sterling who Southgate has continually backed.  There was a belief that this was meant to be but the style of play just didn't fit with the players Southgate had at his disposal.  Getting to the final here was more impressive than the World Cup semi-final and, whilst the play was poor IMO, we did well and Southgate should be largely commended - penalties are a lottery, really.  But with the players available and how the situation unfolded, it was slightly disappointing not to win.  I doubt we'll get a better chance.

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

I think a lot of them players were overrated by the media and were found out against better technical opponents.

Which ones?

[Zatman]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

Which ones?

Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Beckham among others were good Premier League players who struggled in international football conditions because they had no football brain

England had a potential continental midfield pairing in Hargreaves/Carrick but I bet never played a minute together for England

[GingerCollins29]

Other thing to consider is that most of the top international sides between 08 and 16 (spain, germany, italy, brazil etc to name a few) are now far worse

[Zhan_Zhuang]

25 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Beckham among others were good Premier League players who struggled in international football conditions because they had no football brain

England had a potential continental midfield pairing in Hargreaves/Carrick but I bet never played a minute together for England

You are not wrong...although I think Beckham did have a good footballing brain...

Hargreaves or Carrick should have played in the middle with one of Gerrard or Lampard.

The 4-2 game when England played Ledley King in the middle and he looked very good....England had better options in the midfield but chose to play egos instead.

Edited March 26 by Zhan_Zhuang

[Genie]

25 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Beckham among others were good Premier League players who struggled in international football conditions because they had no football brain

Some of the best, most decorated, elite, club captain English footballers had no football brain?

[Zatman]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

Some of the best, most decorated, elite, club captain English footballers had no football brain?

Yes, if they did they could have played together. Lampard and Gerrard thrived as had intelligent players babysitting them at club level like Makelele, Essien, Alonso, Mascherano

[Rds1983]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

Yes, if they did they could have played together. Lampard and Gerrard thrived as had intelligent players babysitting them at club level like Makelele, Essien, Alonso, Mascherano

There was zero balance to the midfield playing Gerrard, Beckham and Lampard together (even worse when Scholes was added in). They all wanted to be in the same areas of the pitch and to be the star of the team. Add in a Carrick or someone to sit behind them and play more of a diamond and it might have worked, but even then I think the egos and club rivalries would have got in the way.