leffe186

That’s the thing, I thought Northern Ireland have looked decent and have a lot of young players, just need them to grow together and maybe find a diamond somewhere. Scotland are a shadow of what they used to be, but still perfectly fine. Ireland look pretty concerning. Arsenal just spent a lot on that young winger (?). Mason Melia looks very promising.

Ferguson is there, obviously, but is there anyone coming through? Where are the main positional issues?

Anyone seen Serbia recently?

This is what I hope. We’ll see. Every early press conference is going to be people asking him if he’ll win a trophy in his second season.

Yeah this feels like a control group experiment . I really like Ange, but obviously I hope this fails spectacularly. The players will love him of course.

Genuinely surprised that Villa are so low.

Can’t blame Scotland too much. As I posted in the first half, it’s just what so many games in UEFA qualifying are like. Belarus have got some useful players and they do the “low block and quick counter” thing. It ends up being tedious almost every time.

Sounds like Spectre tbh.

The irony of the guy pretending not to be in charge so they could play in the CL actually being by some distance the most dictatorial of all. Almost wanted him to poach Glasner to see if Parrish’s head would explode.

Ben Doak has done well, didn’t realize he was only 19.

2-0 Scotland. Nicely worked, neat finish for the own goal.

Pretty bad challenge from Belarus, bit lucky not to get a red.

Well worked in the end. So many UEFA qualifiers are like this - one team low blocking and trying to catch the other on the break, the other just knocking it round desperate to find a way through. It’s pretty tedious.

The lowest percentage possession England have in the qualifiers is 73.4% against Latvia. In that game they had 70 touches in the opposing penalty box against Latvia’s 3. This group is a bit of a pisstake.

One interpretation would be that now they’ve actually seen him play He’ll be fine. In my experience when a group of fans get criticised for flip-flopping it ends up being three different groups who didn’t actually change their opinions at all - pessimists, optimists and the rest. When he plays badly the pessimists come out and some optimists dissent, when he plays well it’s reversed.

How good/bad are Ireland at the moment?

Yeah, Watkins would maybe have made more sense. I do think that he was trying to pull them around at times and the defenders were too close together, and that when he made the space (best example was when Madueke should have played a simple pass through and just didn’t) the players around him just weren’t up to it. Definitely feels like he and other established players played within themselves. Again. The other thing that can work in those games is if he does his wandering minstrel thing and players run in behind him. He barely ever did that though, and I suspect Tuchel wanted him as a target for the wide wingers to find and not to stand on Eze’s toes. Like I say, disciplined and dull.

Nah, today wasn’t pathetic, just disciplined and dull. Ideally you want somebody creative and/or assertive who’s fighting for his place- they’ll try to push the envelope. Rogers did that when he came on, as did MGW to a lesser extent. Anderson too. Rashford and Madueke always seem to flatter to deceive, and I wanted Eze to be more assertive than he was.

High bouncing ball in the box, Andorra munchkin cleared it and Burn tried to block it with his studs up. Guy kicked his studs on the follow through. No intent, just careless. One of those where if he’d been booked already ref would have let it go. Or if he’s one of those occasional mental European refs who live for the drama he could conceivably have got an absolutely ludicrous red.

I think these are the games where someone like Maddison can do serious damage. He’s just a bit more creative in unexpected ways and angles. Eze should be running this game.

I just think the striker in these games is on a bit of a hiding to nothing. He’s got defenders all round him all game. The onus is on the wingers, fullbacks and #10 to create something.

Yeah, although you can see the argument for him against better teams.

Yeah good idea, get the best English manager in to manage the national side.

No added time is fucking infuriating though.

Anderson and Rice in the middle is perfectly justifiable, you have a new guy with a very good experienced guy next to him. I’m not complaining about the line-up at all - 4231 with two wingers, a creative 10 and attacking full-backs is how you win these games. Any issues I have are with the squad itself. Look at that move there, Madueke should have put Kane clean through and not for the first time his decision-making is pish. Rashford then makes a good driving run but isn’t good enough to make the right pass. I’ve not seen Lewis-Skelly enough to say if he’s good enough or not.