Nine

I’m dead

No fucking way

Main character syndrome

Southgate’s a genius!!!

People desperate for us to bomb out to justify their criticism, get a hold of your emotions

Here we gooo

No need to be offside there

If he’s just made some tactical tweaks like is being suggested, why did he need a half time team talk to do so? He could have done that at 25 or 30 minutes of the first, it doesn’t make sense.

Expect we’ll look a lot more like how we did in the second half vs Slovenia, Mainoo will go wide and link up with Saka which should alleviate central pressure for Rice to dictate the tempo more. It’s the biggest problem for us in this tournament so far, the central pairing has not set any rhythm or tempo.. fix that and it fixes a lot.

That’s an incredible fee for him, something going on here

Possibly our most under appreciated player ever.. the definition of a player making a system greater than the sum of its parts

I’m a bit surprised you don’t have more faith in Howe and his team than that, you can guarantee a close eye has been kept on his performances. If he was deemed to have the potential to be worth keeping (or holding on to until his value increases more) then we’d be attempting to ease our PSR issues by selling a different player. This was exactly the plan imo, send him out to a sub standard league and then cash in on his hype. Also just to make the point, in a full bore press Almiron is far from poor.

FFP in full effect

Nkunku was signed to a £200k contract I believe, they will push it higher this summer

As always the issue is they could probably double his wage

Out of any team on our side of the draw Austria is the one I’d most want to avoid at the moment, an ultra well drilled pressing side would give this current England team hell.

Don’t go all mackem on us..

The biggest problem for me is that everyone is playing at different speeds, you’ve got the city players playing at the pace they do for their club and others playing at their own pace.. it all ends up so fucked up and disjointed and it’s obviously on the manager. It’s all about the central 2 in this formation imo (I also think that Guehi has been poor when we’ve had the chance to push the press), the combinations are not working. I thought a more reserved Gallagher than he plays for Chelsea would provide more of that controlled calmness there that Southgate’s system needs and while it was better than the first 2 games in the first half it was still way off, you know there’s an issue when a midfielder as intelligent as Gallagher is struggling to find someone. Glad to admit I was wrong and it was actually Mainoo coming on and dropping into the wide right spaces that eased the pressure off Rice and allowed him to dictate the tempo a lot more.. Mainoo and Palmer looked good on the right together. Mainoo and Saka wouldn’t function like that but could be just as effective. Chopping and changing more or shifting formation at this point would no doubt make the performances even worse somehow I’m convinced of it. Being over reactive here won’t solve it. It’s fucking frustrating to watch Southgate’s philosophy of slow built up controlled possession just does not mesh well with this group it’s as simple as that, we havnt improved enough from game 1-3 to give us any meaningful chance this year and we’ll bomb out to the first good side we face..

The Southgate abuse tonight is going to be terrific

I think Guehi has been poor tonight

Palmer..

We have far more calm and controlled possession high up now (thanks to Mainoo), he will bring on Bowen for sure imo.

Sometimes the obvious swap out of one player for another is a far better idea than chopping and changing more and more especially mid tournament when you havnt been playing well, we will see. We will see big improvement with just Gallagher in for Trent imo.

Lets push Bellingham back into 6 after the season he’s had at Madrid playing higher up.. genius move

The negativity Gallagher gets on here