Group B - Wales (Q), England (Q), Slovakia (Q), Russia

[The College Dropout]

Roy's an idiot. Arrogance has cost us.

 

 

Whether or not we'd have won without them, dropping our two most creative players for Wiltshere who hasn't played all season and Henderson whose s**** is riddiculous. Neither of these players should be at this tournament and to start both against a team who is going to defend for 90 minutes is just incompetence. Taking a gamble when 3 of the best four teams in the competition will in all likelyhoods be on this side of the draw is crazy, and spain are nothing like where they used to be.

So Stupid.  We didn't have 6 points.  Henderson, Wilshere and Bertrand pretty poor.  Rooney could've done with a goal.  Needed to start Vardy with whoever is ahead between Kane and Sturridge.  A good 3-0 is what we needed. 

[Yorkie]

Don't think it was anything shameful, just couldn't put it away. We only found the killer pass through the defenders on two occasions, but Skrtel off the line and Phil Brown palms Clyne's effort over the top.

 

Different lineup but it was more-or-less exactly the same set-up. Pile attackers on the edge of the box, suck the defenders in, give the full-backs room - tippy tappy from 20 yards or ping a hopeful cross. Over and over again. And again. It's a decent enough gameplan and it's nice when it works. When it doesn't, we're shafted.

 

No wingers.

[Gallowgate Toon]

We're definitely a better team with more space to attack. We can't pass quickly and curely enough to get through stacked teams and there's no genuine playmaker in there either. A player who could offer genuine width that isn't a full back might help...

[Yorkie]

Barkley went to this tournament.

[joeyt]

Just seems mad that we rely on full backs so much and we left a winger at home who naturally cuts inside with relative ease most of the time. Would free up so much space for the overlapping right back. Especially as the winger we did take prefers to hug the line

[relámpago blanco]

England could do with carroll here, no one in that squad to win headers when the oppo sit deep

Clearly not enought fret. We need big The Big And, Wicksy or Crouchsterster.

[biggs]

Very disjoined Wiltshire kept giving ball awy and Bertrand not England class imho and would have got marching orders in England for that elbow .

[The College Dropout]

Just seems mad that we rely on full backs so much and we left a winger at home who naturally cuts inside with relative ease most of the time. Would free up so much space for the overlapping right back. Especially as the winger we did take prefers to hug the line

Most fullbacks are failed wingers.  Who attack best with a lot of space to run into. A game plan dependent on fullbacks final ball is doomed for failure for this England side. There's not a top class attacking full back in the squad.

[The College Dropout]

Slovakia reminded me of Leicester defensively a bit. Narrow.  Invited crosses in.  Skrtel and the other lad had it easy in the second half. 

[Wullie]

Forgot Milner was in the squad. I'm not a huge fan of his (based mainly on his frustrating time at Newcastle) but at least he hugs the touchline (stretching the backline a bit thinner) and puts a cross in, and his assist record in the season just gone was extremely good. Why is he there if not to give a wide option in a game like tonight, instead of the mass of central players looking to thread a cute pass through ten bodies? Is it just to work hard and try and close the game down when we're 1-0 up? That worked a charm against Russia.

 

I've seen much worse England teams than this in tournaments but I'm not sure I've seen a messier squad selection.

[Conjo]

[Yorkie]

I've seen much worse England teams than this in tournaments but I'm not sure I've seen a messier squad selection.

 

Sums it up. It's really frustrating; you can see how it's gonna play out. We could see the problems at the time of selection, we can see them during the games, and we're going to be cursing it after we go out.

 

I feel like England could do really well this time but we won't.

[Wullie]

Really like Barney Ronay's pieces in the Guardian:

 

Roy Hodgson did not really want to leave the pitch at the end here. He paused and looked around the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard. He waved vaguely at the emptying stands. He strode across to shake Joe Hart’s hand as England’s last player left the pitch. In the end there was nothing left to do. Hodgson walked off, quite slowly.

 

This is not the end. It is probably not the beginning of the end. It might just be the middle of the end, though. Nice is lovely right now. It has a monied, elite retirement resort feel. It is here that England will now go to play their last-16 game, having been held 0-0 in Saint-Étienne while Wales romped past a wretched Russian team. A quarter-final against France in Paris now looms if England can get there. You have to play them sometime, they say. You also have to lose sometime. The general idea, though, is to stave it off as long as possible.

 

Perhaps England would not have been able to score against a competent Slovakia whatever selection they put out. Probably the real missed chance in Group B was that wild, decelerating draw in Marseilles where the gathering rage of Russia’s ultras almost seemed to suck the ball into England’s net in that horribly fevered final 10 minutes.

 

Really, though, the most remarkable thing about England’s Group B performance has been the contrast between the unremarkable monotony of their football and the fevered contortions of the manager behind them. Hodgson is adamant England dominated all three group games. He is right in a way. But this has been a sterile domination, football played at a stodgy, smothering pitch, remarkable only for its custard-like consistency through the frantic revolution in combinations and partnerships behind it.

 

Here Hodgson spun the wheel again, with six changes to the starting lineup, none of which materially changed the pattern of England’s attacks, the lack of real width, the sense of brittle combinations, of a team struggling on the hoof to get to know itself. The only really startling thing is the way in which England’s manager has now managed to make himself the story in all this. Hodgson does not really have to do any of this.

 

There is no magic formula in this England group waiting to be unpicked. The players are all of a standard more or less. Another moderate, hopeful group of England players are once again performing moderately at a tournament. So why make himself a target? Why place the bucket of water above his own classroom door? Why build a scaffold of all the chop-and-change formations, the ins and outs, and stride so manfully towards it?

 

They say this job sends men briefly, but publicly, mad. Bobby Robson would flap his blazer and twitch in moments of high tension. Graham Taylor sweated, his sodden pyjamas a matter of documentary record. Steve McClaren tried to smile, which only made it worse. Perhaps this is the madness of Roy, an intelligent, reflective man driven to a peculiar kind of restless tinkering. It is almost as though Hodgson has tried to cover himself in France by picking every team, all the teams. Even a frantically whirling, bonging blue-blazered grandfather clock tells the right time once a day.

 

At the end of which England have finished second in a moderate tournament group, playing without rhythm or drive or any sense of getting the most out of some talented parts. Just as remarkable is the basic boredom of the teams all this friskiness has rustled up here. The sheer novelty of Hodgson’s team selection was by far the most interesting about this England performance, like a man making a pan full of rubbery scrambled eggs while performing a handstand.

 

England did play well at times here, or at least like a group of individuals trying to force some spark into the game. How, one wonders, has it come to this, almost as though the tournament has come out of nowhere? England had a new shape, too, or at least an oddly fluid shape, all the shapes. It looked like a 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2, or an adaptable 4-1-3-2. Later some other players came on. Others moved around. Other things happened. People stood in other places. Nothing really changed.

 

The resting of Wayne Rooney will look like a piece of hubris now. His name was chanted by the fans in the first half and England’s captain did introduce some urgency. Perhaps the decision to rest him will be vindicated at some later date, though those later dates are a bit further away now.

 

England will rattle on. One or two pieces clicked. Jamie Vardy, Nathaniel Clyne and Jordan Henderson did well. Loyalty to Jack Wilshere was a good thing but he is just not fit, sharp or ready He had a really horrible game here. That is more an issue of styling, though. The real failure in the past two years is the absence of any actual growth, the settling in of a spine, a way of playing culled from Hodgson’s sifting and sorting.

 

Saint-Étienne was a humid, feverish place before kick-off, England’s travelling support swelling the squares and filling the town with an undeniably authentic tournament feel. Don’t take me home, they sang, please don’t take me home. Really? Are you sure? Because for all the froth on the periphery, not a lot seems to be happening here beyond an oddly angsty drift towards an ending.

[Yorkie]

Good stuff.

 

Guy loves imagery, mind. Making a pan full of rubbery scrambled eggs while performing a handstand? wot

[louistoon]

Shearer having a proper mardy on MOTD :lol:

[mozy]

He thought Henderson did well, so his opinion means nothing to me.

[Leazes_End_Mag]

Absolutely incredible the amount of people in the media and even others on twitter, facebook etc that think that:

 

A) Henderson was better than absolute shite

B) We have any chance once we come up against a half decent team

[Parky]

The other problem with the Eng team is the amount of games this lot have played (yeah that old chestnut). They looked mentally tired the last 20min.

[Wullie]

Course we have a chance against a decent side.

[Kaizero]

 

[jollof rice and pea]

Shearer having a proper mardy on MOTD :lol:

Was correct on every point.

[Cronky]

I'm pretty sure the starting eleven for the next game will be the one that started the second half against Wales. None of the players coming in made a decent case for inclusion. So at least we have a settled side now, and a set pattern of play.

 

Clyne did well in the first half against a poor full back, but overall I felt we missed Walker and Rose. Those two have really improved this season.

[The College Dropout]

 

 

I've seen much worse England teams than this in tournaments but I'm not sure I've seen a messier squad selection.

Also the worst group we've ever been in and we've won 1 game.

[Parky]

Had that been Italy or Germany in the last 20 min they would have spent the whole time running at the back line at pace and diving. We still seem to be tournament naive.

[The College Dropout]

Had that been Italy or Germany in the last 20 min they would have spent the whole time running at the back line at pace and diving. We still seem to be tournament naive.

The squad is big game naive. Not sure how much that matters however.  Nearly every player of Beckham's generation would win European competitions and appear in multiple finals at club level then look naive for England. In this whole squad only Rooney and Joe Hart have been in CL semi finals or better.