Gareth Southgate

[HanoiVillan]

7 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

Difference in opinion bud, don't worry. It's all good. I'm going to get back to making my coffee... 

Don't worry, it's all good, but not going to pretend I don't strongly disagree about this.

Our actual targets, set by the FA, were the quarters in Russia (we exceeded this by one round) and the semis in 2020 (again, exceeded by one round). Most people prior to the tournament in 2018 thought the quarters was an *ambitious* target, given the age and inexperience of the squad, and the complete flops in recent tournaments. The irony of Southgate's surprise success in that tournament is that people have retconned 'we should have won' as some kind of reasonable comment, precisely *because* we exceeded expectations.

[Rds1983]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

Don't worry, it's all good, but not going to pretend I don't strongly disagree about this.

Our actual targets, set by the FA, were the quarters in Russia (we exceeded this by one round) and the semis in 2020 (again, exceeded by one round). Most people prior to the tournament in 2018 thought the quarters was an *ambitious* target, given the age and inexperience of the squad, and the complete flops in recent tournaments. The irony of Southgate's surprise success in that tournament is that people have retconned 'we should have won' as some kind of reasonable comment, precisely *because* we exceeded expectations.

I'm not going to base what I believe is achievable upon what the FA think. I regularly disagree with their approach to things. As I mentioned in my previous post, the way the tournament progressed in 2018 we played 2 decent teams and capitulated against both of them. Getting to the semi was a fluke of the draw and I generally believe we weren't great that tournament due to how we set up and played and we could have played a lot better. We should have beaten Croatia who were very dependent on Modric. 

In 2020 I think we had the 2nd best squad there but that it wasn't Italy who were better than us. We played the final at Wembley and capitulated again due to negative tactics and selections. Italy weren't as good as people suggest and I think were lucky to win. Their form pre and post tournament shows this. Chiellini ran that final just as Modric did for Croatia. In both games we were dominated by a brilliant but not unbeatable player and we let them do it by sitting back, we didn't try to use our strengths and dominate. 

I do agree with you that tournament football is very luck based and difficult, but I feel that luck was playing into our hands and we did nothing to try and capitilse on it as we were to scared of taking risks. 

Clearly we're very opposed on this and will never agree though. But that's the joy of football I guess. 

[HanoiVillan]

9 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

he can be when he subbed 2 of them on to take penalties  but if you go back through the Euro 2020 threads italy were the better team in that tournament, he made mistakes in the game, those penalty subs, mount on the right, not bringing grealish on earlier etc but we lost to the tournaments best team

what he's done well is he's tickled the bollocks of the players and got them to seemingly want to be there which for all the talent of the golden generation was again seemingly the problem, that's why the likes of coady and even mings will stay in and around this team

he has benefitted from the shift in football where the rivalries have been put to bed, they're all on each others social media and mates off the pitch as well as we won stuff at youth level* so he does have a crop to work with, foden being the obvious one

all that said I still think that he is purposefully leaning towards protecting our weakness - we do have a shit defence - rather than towards our strength - we have a world class attack, sounds strange to say that hopefully phillips is injured for a bit longer and bellingham plays a bit more, ive got nothing against phillips but him and rice as a pair doesnt work for me, i can see why southgate likes it but it stifles us

and as a result we're painfully boring to watch at times, he is safe but he's also safe in more ways than one, hence why the FA wont sack him, he's here for a long time but with all his hypocrisy in his interviews, his stubbornness with his selections, his distorted opinion on experience basically meaning that he favours top 4 players its easy to see why people dont like him

* our U21s have a bigger management problem, the FA never pull the plug at the right time or appoint the right guy, watched a bit of them recently to watch ramsey and i dont see a ton of talent there if im honest, if you look through all of the age groups then england will be ok but if you look at the U21s and ask who's next its not a long list, ramsey, elliot, probably Jones because he plays for liverpool, there's seemingly a lot of 20/21 year olds in that team who are still struggling to get PL football

That's a fair post v4e, and there's much that I would agree with. Just on the bolded:

On the first point, yes, that's fair. I think most people would probably have expected that Rashford and Sancho would have been more likely to score than Henderson or Walker, so I don't blame him for making the subs. I do think there's a much better argument that he made them too late and didn't give the former two enough time on the pitch to get up to speed. That I think is a legitimate criticism.

On the latter, I guess I just don't see it, and I think a lot of it is just over-reading each comment that he makes. Is it in some sense 'hypocritical' that he gave the reason that he didn't want to pick Grealish until he had PL experience, but then picked Phillips when he didn't have any? I guess so, but the obvious interpretation to me is just that he picked both players when he wanted to and in the case of Jack, was looking for a reason why he hadn't picked him that would nevertheless make clear the door was open to picking him later. The only person who can have a grievance about this is Jack himself, and he seems to have gotten over it fine. With regard to selections, he is clearly of the opinion that it's more useful to give more time together to what he predicts will be the core group playing in the next tournament, rather than ending up - as we did a lot especially in the decade before him - with a bunch of guys on 1 or 2 caps who were picked on PL form and then lost that form. Frankly I think Southgate is just right about this.

[Zatman]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Well we came within a kick or two of winning the Euros, so we were extremely close to winning on home soil. For all of the (largely justified) criticism about Southgate's negativity in the final, a penalty shootout is a coin flip, and he can't be held personally responsible for players taking crap penalties.

Usually this is the case but that was on him. Grealish wanted to take a penalty while Sterling takes them sometimes for City and he insisted on Saka and Sancho who to my mind have never taken a penalty before 

Saka should never have been put in that position 

[MrSmirch]

David Moyes for England!

[sidcow]

3 hours ago, jim said:

This team isn’t a patch on the golden generation. How did they do with one of the best managers in the world? 

I've brought it in here because the Gresford thread is getting derailed. 

I disagree actually.  It's pretty subjective which was the better team.  I'm not convinced The Golden Generation were as good as they were cracked up to be.  

And as someone else said compared to the current competition the existing team have far less to compete with. 

So, in my opinion subjective. 

But the main problem with The Golden Generation was the internal divisions.  There was huge inter club rivalry and a North/South divide which caused massive rifts between the players. I don't think they could ever fulfil their potential. 

So maybe Southgate can take some credit for bringing the squad closer together, but I suspect it's just something that's evolved naturally as the knob heads have retired.  The current crop in the main seem much less egotistical. 

[foreveryoung]

Southgate could never manage the golden generation. He gets away with this team, cause it's a fairly young squad. Truthfully, I don't know how they put up with his babble, surely must be different when the FA aren't watching.

[Greenfly]

7 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I've brought it in here because the Gresford thread is getting derailed. 

I disagree actually.  It's pretty subjective which was the better team.  I'm not convinced The Golden Generation were as good as they were cracked up to be.  

And as someone else said compared to the current competition the existing team have far less to compete with. 

So, in my opinion subjective. 

But the main problem with The Golden Generation was the internal divisions.  There was huge inter club rivalry and a North/South divide which caused massive rifts between the players. I don't think they could ever fulfil their potential. 

So maybe Southgate can take some credit for bringing the squad closer together, but I suspect it's just something that's evolved naturally as the knob heads have retired.  The current crop in the main seem much less egotistical. 

I think growing up with social media has more to do with the player's closeness than Southgate. They all seem to be good mates and regularly interact with each other over different social media platforms, the clubs they represent being irrelevant.

[Mic09]

So, let's talk about Jack Grealish. 

[Xela]

Drops Mings and says Grealish is better suited to England now he has had half a season on the bench.

**** off Southgate. 

[Zatman]

The TAA situation sums up Southgate perfectly, he doesnt rate him because he cant actually defend as seen on Saturday night but his qualities on the ball are overlooked because Southgate wants his defenders to just defend if possible

For this reason he calls up 5 right backs because he cant leave TAA out because he is afraid of the criticism from the Liverpool loving media

[Stevo985]

9 hours ago, Zatman said:

The TAA situation sums up Southgate perfectly, he doesnt rate him because he cant actually defend as seen on Saturday night but his qualities on the ball are overlooked because Southgate wants his defenders to just defend if possible

For this reason he calls up 5 right backs because he cant leave TAA out because he is afraid of the criticism from the Liverpool loving media

This is exactly my problem with Southgate.

I understand that if you have a system that you want to implement then some good players may be sacrificed because they don't fit into that system.

That's fine.

My issue is we have the best generation of attacking players we have ever had. I firmly believe that to be true. And TAA is part of that.
Yet Southgate has implemented an incredibly defensive system which leaves out these kinds of players.

When Grealish was at Villa I, and many others, were saying Southgate should be building the team and the system around players like Jack and Foden. I'd throw TAA in there as well. 
Instead he's building his system around Phillips, Rice, Henderson etc

 

Again like I said in the other thread, I'm not saying he's done a bad job. He's done a good job in fact. Obviously. A semi final and a final is a great return. But I think it's fairly clear that Southgate's limitations are limiting this squad. We could and should have won the Euros. That Italy game was there for the taking.
If your system can't incorporate one of the best attacking fullbacks in the world then maybe we need a new system?

At the moment we've got a 1000BHP under the bonnet and Southgate is concentrating on handling. 

[mikeyp102]

TAA is a tricky one though, clearly a very talented footballer and there is still talk he’ll eventually get moved to CM. 
However, England do have an abundance of top quality RBs and I think James can do the defensive work better but also is pretty good going forward, I think he out scored TAA than his season.  
 

As for Southgate, he is some amazing attacking talent in his hands but won’t play them. I agree that we should’ve won the WC if he’d gone attacking and not tried to sit back. We now have some very talented players who are very comfortable on the ball, utilise that!

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, mikeyp102 said:

TAA is a tricky one though, clearly a very talented footballer and there is still talk he’ll eventually get moved to CM. 
 

I think Southgate floated this idea then tried play him there and failed. 

Klopp had a go at Southgate for it

[TheAuthority]

He's a big nosed tunk sprumket and I can't stand the fecker. The sooner he's gone the better, for someone who could unleash the attacking power of this current generation of England players.

We are so BORING to watch and every time, EVERY TIME, he's faced a team with a decent coach and some players with pedigree he's FAILED and been shown up to be naive. The draw's at every competition he been at have been laughably kind.

And all of you who say that I'm irrational, and hold a grudge because he loves MIDDLESBOROUGH rather than play for us, come on then, 

You bunch of Garth loving big nose fetishists.

 

[fightoffyour]

**** off Sareth

[foreveryoung]

Maybe he should be a spokes person on racism on football. cause he don't ***** shut up about it. I wouldn't mind but most of what he says is to earn FA brownie points. We have heard your babble all before Gareth, it's time for your Precious FA to do something about it!!

I really can't listen to his dull tone babble. Just do it on the pitch and win us trophy you boring *****

[rjw63]

Can the Mods remove the Boregate stuff from the Gresford thread and put it in here?

It's bad enough reading about this big-nosed word removed but bumping up "The Thread Of Obsession"  because of him makes it doubly bad.

[sidcow]

He's truly a great manager. This England team is inspirational. 

Phillips for Coady when losing with 10 minutes to go is the unmistakable mark of genius. 

Edited June 4, 2022 by sidcow

[Strog]

Complete and utter fckutard