Euro 2024

[Letters]

I don't think Southgate is a really top manager, but he's got us to a World Cup semi-final and two Euro finals in a row - having never been in one in our history before. Yesterday was our first ever final on foreign soil. He's failed to land a trophy but we've only one of those in our history, he's not failed where others have succeeded. He's actually done better than every other manager in my lifetime.
I don't buy that we suddenly have this exceptional squad which should be sweeping all before us. Spain were clearly the best team in the tournament and they didn't completely hammer us, we played well last night and stood up to them. The group games were a shambles and we were certainly lucky against Slovakia, but we played well after that. Teams sometimes play their way in to a tournament and it felt like we did that.
I don't know if Southgate can take us any further but if we do get a new manager then after a honeymoon period in 2 years time we will fail again and everyone will be saying he's shit too
I've seen this shit for decades now.

[HCZ_Reborn]

I have to say if Southgate was going to go he’d have gone already, I think even he realises that staying he intends to stay would have gone down with the media like it raining flaming bags of dog shit

He’s hoping for things to die down and then announce he intends to stay. Which makes him delusional or at least fucking selfish and the FA negligent and hugely incompetent….blazer wearing cunts who prefer all the diversity vibes to actually winning things

[HCZ_Reborn]

I don't think Southgate is a really top manager, but he's got us to a World Cup semi-final and two Euro finals in a row - having never been in one in our history before. Yesterday was our first ever final on foreign soil. He's failed to land a trophy but we've only one of those in our history, he's not failed where others have succeeded. He's actually done better than every other manager in my lifetime.
I don't buy that we suddenly have this exceptional squad which should be sweeping all before us. Spain were clearly the best team in the tournament and they didn't completely hammer us, we played well last night and stood up to them. The group games were a shambles and we were certainly lucky against Slovakia, but we played well after that. Teams sometimes play their way in to a tournament and it felt like we did that.
I don't know if Southgate can take us any further but if we do get a new manager then after a honeymoon period in 2 years time we will fail again and everyone will be saying he's shit too
I've seen this shit for decades now.

With no offence what you buy or don’t buy is not especially relevant. Players like Bellingham, Foden, Rice, Saka are better players than most if not all international teams have at their disposal. This isn’t an empty boast, Spain were good last night but in many ways it’s a team with a lot of average. Fabian Ruiz for example is no where near the standard England have in midfield nor is Dani Olmo. Le Normand and Laporte are players that picked to play for Spain because they had no chance of getting near the French squad. Carvajal is old, Cucurella can’t defend and at club level isn’t especially great going forward.
To put it plainly, this was a beatable team who we made look better than they are. They’ve had a fantastic tournament but in a way they’ve lucked out from a general nadir in the quality of international football. This won’t be a team that wins or I suspect even competes for the World Cup in two years.


Your argument rests on the basis that of the boast that England would have won X if they had better coach etc. And I absolutely agree with you that this was an empty boast, I’d never previously gone into an international tournament thinking England were likely winners. But as I said to you in a previous post, Bookies don’t base their odds on blind jingoism there was clearly some thinking behind making us favourites for the tournament.

Now for me it wasn’t just the tactics, I think some of the squad selection were pretty rum….picking Crystal Palace players off the back of a few good games at the back end of the season for example

Guehi nor Eze are good enough to be internationals.


Nothing is guaranteed in life, replacing Southgate won’t guarantee us the World Cup….but it’s the nearest thing to guaranteed that we won’t win it if he stays on. And that I think would be an unpardonable indictment against the FA

[HCZ_Reborn]

The ten minutes or so after Palmer’s equaliser encapsulates not just Southgate’s time as manager but the situation we face going forward. Spain were rattled, there’s no guarantee that we would have won if we’d risked taking the game to them but we wouldn’t have died wondering.

There’s a pool of talent in this country that is good enough to win the World Cup, arguably I think has a stronger case to make for its ability to do so than any other individual country. That’s a guarantee of nothing, but what I cannot abide or accept is for us to never know the answer because we play it safe with a coach that also plays it safe

[Mac76]

With no offence what you buy or don’t buy is not especially relevant. Players like Bellingham, Foden, Rice, Saka are better players than most if not all international teams have at their disposal. This isn’t an empty boast, Spain were good last night but in many ways it’s a team with a lot of average. Fabian Ruiz for example is no where near the standard England have in midfield nor is Dani Olmo. Le Normand and Laporte are players that picked to play for Spain because they had no chance of getting near the French squad. Carvajal is old, Cucurella can’t defend and at club level isn’t especially great going forward.
To put it plainly, this was a beatable team who we made look better than they are. They’ve had a fantastic tournament but in a way they’ve lucked out from a general nadir in the quality of international football. This won’t be a team that wins or I suspect even competes for the World Cup in two years.


Your argument rests on the basis that of the boast that England would have won X if they had better coach etc. And I absolutely agree with you that this was an empty boast, I’d never previously gone into an international tournament thinking England were likely winners. But as I said to you in a previous post, Bookies don’t base their odds on blind jingoism there was clearly some thinking behind making us favourites for the tournament.

Now for me it wasn’t just the tactics, I think some of the squad selection were pretty rum….picking Crystal Palace players off the back of a few good games at the back end of the season for example

Guehi nor Eze are good enough to be internationals.


Nothing is guaranteed in life, replacing Southgate won’t guarantee us the World Cup….but it’s the nearest thing to guaranteed that we won’t win it if he stays on. And that I think would be an unpardonable indictment against the FA

largely agree although I don't really understand your regularly singling out of Guehi, I thought he was perfectly reasonable - admittedly I'd have preferred Konsa but that's becausee he's just a bit better and perhaps slightly more self-assured, not because Guehi's terrible

I had no problem at the time with his picking Eze but in retrospect he's the type of player you have to build a team around and that was never going to happen, plus he looked a little out of his depth, Southgate should have tried him out a bit more beforehand, but that's the problem when he's obsessed with certain players

and had he been given game time I think Wharton could have been England's surprise player of the tournament, or maybe not, we'll never know now

[Marc Overmars]

It felt like watching a PL team against a Championship side to me. We weren’t bad and had plenty of endeavour as we always do but demonstrated zero quality to trouble Spain. We could barely string 3 or 4 passes together before losing the ball and as a result couldn’t produce any decent passages of play, none of those players wanted to take responsibility and played every ball as safe as they could. The goal Palmer scored felt completely out of the blue and after that we just continued to plod along hoping for something to happen without ever really turning the screw.

This is a very capable squad but they don’t play with the same confidence and composure you see week in week out for their clubs. There has to be a change of coach now because you don’t want to waste anymore opportunities while the landscape of international football is the way it is currently.

[Mac76]

It felt like watching a PL team against a Championship side to me. We weren’t bad and had plenty of endeavour as we always do but demonstrated zero quality to trouble Spain. We could barely string 3 or 4 passes together before losing the ball and as a result couldn’t produce any decent passages of play, none of those players wanted to take responsibility and played every ball as safe as they could. The goal Palmer scored felt completely out of the blue and after that we just continued to plod along hoping for something to happen without ever really turning the screw.

This is a very capable squad but they don’t play with the same confidence and composure you see week in week out for their clubs. There has to be a change of coach now because you don’t want to waste anymore opportunities while the landscape of international football is the way it is currently.

I do agree, Southgate took the first step in creating a better team atmosphere and giving it values but he can't create a winning mentality, the baton needs to be passed

[Letters]

With no offence what you buy or don’t buy is not especially relevant.

You say this as if I'm saying I don't buy that 2+2 = 4. You keep stating opinion and claiming it's fact.
We do have some exceptional players, sure. But good enough that we should be expecting to be winning tournaments like this? That's the bit I don't buy.
We should be contenders, but we were - we got to the final.
Spain were the best team in the tournament, they won every game. I'm not saying they were unbeatable but they were clearly better throughout the tournament and on the night.

Your argument rests on the basis that of the boast that England would have won X if they had better coach etc. And I absolutely agree with you that this was an empty boast

So what are we arguing about then? Bookies base their odds on multiple factors, we were clearly contenders and that makes our odds lower than most. But betting patterns are a factor too and a lot of England fans excitedly believing it was coming home also lowers the odds. No-one I spoke to actually thought we were favourites.

Nothing is guaranteed in life, replacing Southgate won’t guarantee us the World Cup….but it’s the nearest thing to guaranteed that we won’t win it if he stays on. And that I think would be an unpardonable indictment against the FA

I think it is time for Southgate to move on. But having watched England for decades now I am pretty convinced that we will fail again in two years and then we'll be having the same conversation about "if only we had a better manager". I've seen that conversation going round and round for decades now. The actual truth is we're not that good - we're not that bad either, and I'd agree we do have a better squad now than we've had for a while. But we do seem to constantly convince ourselves that we're entitled to be winning these trophies despite our entire history showing that we really aren't.

[Mac76]

I think it is time for Southgate to move on. But having watched England for decades now I am pretty convinced that we will fail again in two years and then we'll be having the same conversation about "if only we had a better manager". I've seen that conversation going round and round for decades now. The actual truth is we're not that good - we're not that bad either, and I'd agree we do have a better squad now than we've had for a while. But we do seem to constantly convince ourselves that we're entitled to be winning these trophies despite our entire history showing that we really aren't.

I think that's a bit fatalistic - England has won a major tournament (albeit with help from a linesman) and pubbed their way to a few finals so it's not unreasonable that, with some very good players at our disposal, a bit more of a winning mentality plus a fair throw of the dice we could do it.

ofc many teams underperformed this summer - if any one or more of Germany, Italy and France get theri act together for the WC then that immediately will make it more challenging, plus we surely can't hope to have such a jammy draw again but that's why we need to play to our potential

For me though as much as it's about wanting to win, I just want to be able to cheer on an Engalnd team wholeheartedly again, something I've not been able to do because A) the football's largely been so dire and B) the team's been full of spud/ex-spud shite

[HCZ_Reborn]

largely agree although I don't really understand your regularly singling out of Guehi, I thought he was perfectly reasonable - admittedly I'd have preferred Konsa but that's becausee he's just a bit better and perhaps slightly more self-assured, not because Guehi's terrible

I had no problem at the time with his picking Eze but in retrospect he's the type of player you have to build a team around and that was never going to happen, plus he looked a little out of his depth, Southgate should have tried him out a bit more beforehand, but that's the problem when he's obsessed with certain players

and had he been given game time I think Wharton could have been England's surprise player of the tournament, or maybe not, we'll never know now

When it comes to top level football he is terrible, at the level we aspire to you simply can’t afford to carry a player who is totally uncomfortable with the ball to feet. He’s hard working, but he doesn’t read the game well enough to make the interceptions he should and it affects those around him, Rice constantly looking over his shoulder because the trust is not there….it affected Stones as well.
You might say to me well if Southgate stays it could be worse we could have Maguire back, but it’s much of a muchness. At least with Maguire, Stones has played with him enough so he knows how to cover for his deficiencies.


Guehi is a solid defender for a mid table premier league team. That’s what he should have stayed


Eze is quick, strong and hardworking but lacks a footballing brain which makes him only slightly more useful than Gervinho. As you say he looked totally out of his depth, I think if you’re talking about friendlies or qualifiers it definitely makes sense to pick a player like that to see how he works out…but for a big tournament like that you just don’t take a wildcard like that.