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Euro 2020 : Group D (England, Scotland, Croatia, Czechia)


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20 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Scoring the only goal in a tight game = excellent. That's not difficult to grasp. Sterling has been bang out of form but he raised his game in an England shirt, I imagine because it gives him something he can't get at club level. GS is vindicated. But we still want to see Jack, surely he'll get the nod at some point against SJM. 

I thought he looked a shadow of himself for much of the first half. Maybe the goal helps going forward. He needs some swagger. 

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Just now, theboyangel said:

Has he though? The left side offered very little in attack and Sterling scored when he moved centrally. 
 

(are you Jermaine Jenas btw 😉

Haha. No, just giving him credit for the first win in opening game ever at this tournoi. I get the nuances and the subtleties but I have to applaud the result, it's all that matters. 

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It was a bit of a Villa-without-Grealish type performance. 

20 mins of reasonable football, then fairly turgid for the most part.

Defence looked solid, winger didn't do a lot but got a goal, midfield largely OK but little creativity.

Long ball into a channel the main attacking threat.

Ball retention in the second half was a bit scrambled.

A solid enough result but I'd like to think we can boost the performance.

 

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1 minute ago, HKP90 said:

I thought he looked a shadow of himself for much of the first half. Maybe the goal helps going forward. He needs some swagger. 

I think Croatia were really, really well organised and we struggled to do anything about it. 

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3 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

So is it about winning or performance? 
 

I re-read your posts about 10 times and I’m still not sure what you are saying.

You said you cannot make mistakes (ie losing) but say that we need to find balance in the team during the group stages. If you do the latter you risk the former.

 

I’m not saying we should be happy clapping that performance, but maybe, just maybe we can find solace in the fact we **** Won? 

Not sure why you are picking on me when others have said the same and I'm generally one of the positive people on this forum but I will answer

It's about winning obviously but the performance didnt give me massive hope for future games (mainly in the knockout stages). 

 

So my point of my posts

1) it was great to win

2) performance (using your word, I would say less about performance but more about what we created and did than style) - we didnt create enough, we didnt get into the final third enough, we didnt get it to our attacking players enough.  That is a concern for me going forward.  We were lucky somewhat against Croatia to take one of our very few chances, but you cant argue with it.  I'm concerned if we only have the same amount of chances against bigger teams and dont get the involvement of our attacking players we will then be in trouble because we are relying on no errors at the other end or a bit of class at the other end which better teams will have.

 

Hope that helps.  In summary, I'm delighted we won but concerned for future games more than I thought I would be

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1 minute ago, HKP90 said:

I thought he looked a shadow of himself for much of the first half. Maybe the goal helps going forward. He needs some swagger. 

I was always of the opinion that Sterling has to earn that place and on today's game he has earned it - Jack has to wait - but that in itself is only a good thing, he will be desperate to take his chance when it comes - can easily see him doing great things later on 

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46 minutes ago, Genie said:

I had to turn it off, decent result, but the whole thing was way over the top.

And they wander why every other nation wants England to lose at tournaments it’s nothing to do with the players it’s these clowns in studios  

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For those of you saying we couldn't do this against a better team....

How many Champions League winners in the Croatia team, how many caps more do they have on average per player?

Croatia also made it to the World Cup final in 2018.

They are a very good team!

England looked professional and did what was necessary, how often can we say that at a European Championship before?

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9 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

It’s pretty clear to me that we need to find ways of optimising the time we have the ball in the areas where our strengths lie.

We need better ball retention in the final third and someone who can bring in our quality wide players.

Kane was dropping deep to try and help, but he’s no false 9. 

Mount for all his strengths was not helping in this regard. We were hitting him long and he was not winning any 50-50’s. 

Jack would have really helped there. 

 

You're having a go at me and then you are being negative yourself

Blink 182 Reaction GIF

 

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1 hour ago, gwi1890 said:

Definitely they’ll be up for it  they have a good squad  not as good as England but they will raise their game for the occasion and I don’t think England have the passion heart or guts whatever you want to call It to deal with The Scotts

Where is the game being played?

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Just now, nick76 said:

Not sure why you are picking on me when others have said the same and I'm generally one of the positive people on this forum but I will answer

It's about winning obviously but the performance didnt give me massive hope for future games (mainly in the knockout stages). 

 

So my point of my posts

1) it was great to win

2) performance (using your word, I would say less about performance but more about what we created and did than style) - we didnt create enough, we didnt get into the final third enough, we didnt get it to our attacking players enough.  That is a concern for me going forward.  We were lucky somewhat against Croatia to take one of our very few chances, but you cant argue with it.  I'm concerned if we only have the same amount of chances against bigger teams and dont get the involvement of our attacking players we will then be in trouble because we are relying on no errors at the other end or a bit of class at the other end which better teams will have.

 

Hope that helps.  In summary, I'm delighted we won but concerned for future games more than I thought I would be

Thankyou. It does make things clearer. 
Not picking on you at all. Your post just sort of niggled at me. 

Now let’s go and have a beer and dream about spanking Scotland 5-0.

Fwiw, I really hope Scotland and Wales go through too, but I wasn’t super impressed by Wales. 
 

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International football is different... in a way the stakes are higher.

Villa bias aside, I think it was decent and certainly won't be complaining just because Jack didn't get on. He will get his chance.

Nothing wrong with easing your way in, particularly when you haven't previously won the first game in this tournament.

Well done England, Raheem and Gareth.

Edited by Lerner's Driver
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2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

You're right, I'm convinced. We should just give up and forfeit the rest of the tournament. This result shows we have no chance.

Does that performance today make you believe we could beat France, Belgium, Portugal etc?

All I'm saying is if we want to win this tournament we will have to play much better.

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1 minute ago, Okonokos said:

Does that performance today make you believe we could beat France, Belgium, Portugal etc?

All I'm saying is if we want to win this tournament we will have to play much better.

I didn't think we were *likely* to beat France or Belgium before this match, and I don't think we're *likely* to do so now. But we certainly *could* do.

You can only beat what's in front of you, and I think this thread is majorly short of credit given for not allowing Croatia to dictate the game. I don't think a massively better performance than this was ever particularly likely, given the standard of the opponents, the heat of the day, and the fact it's the first match of the tournament.

Let's see how we get on against better teams when we face them, rather than assuming that because this wasn't like Liverpool v Norwich that we've got no hope.

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