Come back Southgate

What a horrible rut, reaching semi finals and finals.

 

Absolutely 100% .
Ah but we have the best players in the world.
It didn't look like that on the past 2 showings.
Division . That's what it looked like.
Southgate had a togetherness.

 

I travelled out for the Andorra game and was there last night too... two awful performances, so much to debate but I'll keep it to a few brief thoughts....

The staggering lack of energy and pace is bewildering. I struggle to think of any other team who barely breaks into a sprint at any time. After the disallowed goal, out of anger, we broke quickly ONCE. We flew forward and nearly got a good ball into the box. But that was it. It was actually a surprise to see us running. This has to change, regardless of how unimportant a game is, some degree of energy is needed.

I don't buy into the idea that because we've started poorly under Tuchel, Southgate should have stayed. He did a great job, then started to go stale. The lack of ideas last summer when it mattered showed this. We stumbled into the final and then had no idea how to beat Spain. I do realise reaching a final kind of makes my point seem daft, but we were so so poor for most of the tournament.

For me, Tuchel is here for one tournament and knows this. He's here to try to get us over the line with a squad likely to change significantly after next summer, with Kane, Walker and others moving on. I don't think he's that fussed about building things, nor the results at this stage. He's basically here to compete next summer and all these games are basically a warm up to that.

Our window of opportunity for winning something has probably gone. Italy at Wembley was THE one, last summer being the second best chance. We've had a period where so many other countries have gone through a transition whilst we were at a very strong level. We've missed out and I fear it could be years before we get another chance.

If VAR cannot get that goal correct yesterday, there really isn't much point in using it at all.

Finally, and I do feel able to speak on this due to attending most England games, the England fans deserve a lot of credit. Over 7000 out in Barcelona, paying a ridiculous amount of money and having the logistical nightmare of getting to and from the stadium. Toilets over flowing, not enough turnstiles open, difficult to get refreshments, but still great backing for the team and once again, zero trouble anywhere. Then again last night, before the awful performance sapped all enthusiasm, loads of noise and support. Well done everyone.

 

England won more knockout games under Southgate than in our entire pre-Southgate history. I still think it was absolutely mental to want him gone.

 

Nobody can argue with his tournament record, it was more the performances and tactics I was meaning. I can’t remember loads of games that I watched where I thought “we are going to win this tournament”. Particularly the last euros where we seemed to keep scraping by somehow.

In my lifetime watching football, he’s easily got the best stats of any England manager, I just felt like he’d taken us as far as he could and with the players he had at his disposal, particularly in attack, we should have come home with some silverware in his time.

 

You could say this about basically any England manager for the last 30 years. Nobody came as close as Southgate, and he did it multiple times.

In terms of England managers he was a massive outlier in terms of his success and yet people wanted him gone. The sense of entitlement with our national team is ridiculous.

 

Fair play to you mate.
You have a better idea than most of us, attending games like you do.
I think you have made some valid points.
Most obvious the lack of pace getting forward which was also a problem under Southgate.
I'm bored with this modern football, reasons being I can take it or leave it now.
Which is strange I would always watch footy at any level when I could.

 

I feel sorry for the people who shelled out good money to watch that crap.

 

Agree totally. Southgate is the 2nd most successful manager the national team has ever had. By some margin.

 

And Southgate got us 2 finals and a world Cup Semi Final. But he wasn't good enough

 

"Nobody can argu with his tournament record"

I'd say that's basically the measure of a international manager.

"We should have come home with some silverware in his time"

Unfortunately the other teams are trying to win aswell.

 

I think the thing that irks a lof of people is that the Italy defeat was completely self-inflicted, mostly by Southgate's over-cautiousness. There's a strong argument to say he was tactically poor in the 2018 semi as well. And I say that as a big Southgate admirer.

 

Lets remember those aren't facts but opinion.
Doing something different doesn't necessarily mean we'd have won either game.
Another opinion is thst two arrogant penalties cost us the final against Italy.
But if the two that missed had just stepped up and hit it with some purpose they may still have missed.

I do take your point, and that had become the wider perception of Southgate in the media and the armchair experts.

 

How many tournaments did he win?

 

Oh definitely. The penalties were awful! But in my opinion we should have had more than enough about us to comfortably beat that Italian side inside 120 minutes.

 

The problem on a international level is that its one knock-out tournament every 2 years.
The best team doesn't not always win a knockout competition.
Usually the best team wins a league.

 

Correct. I can think of plenty of international tournaments where the winners were exceptionally jammy. And even more finalists who somehow got there despite being exceptionally crap for most of the tournament. Like England in the last Euros. Played pretty well for about an hour against The Netherlands, apart from which we were pretty painful to watch.

 

I just don't like him

 

I looked at Senegal @5:1 and thought nah. When they went one down I thought, shall I? And didn't. As we used to say "F uck my pit cap!"

 

Interestingly (or maybe not), we do the same with cricket. From memory I think England have had 700-odd Test players but Australia haven't yet passed 500.