Euro 2024

[HCZ_Reborn]

https://www.skysports.com/football/n...amie-carragher

Just as well Carragher works for Sky and not the BBC as this opinion is bad enough to warrant withholding licence fee payment (which is an utter outdated joke anyway but different argument for a different time)
“Im sure he wasn’t telling some players to press and others not to”

First of all, I don’t think anyone can possibly be sure of that. Although most likely he wasn’t given them instructions or drilling the players in team pressing at all….players don’t collectively decide to do stuff like that. It’s a result of confusing or non existent tactical instructions. I’m absolutely sure he wouldn’t have instructed the players to close down the opposition in their own third and stop them from playing out, because at no time did we ever try to do this.

I’m sure he didn’t explicitly tell Foden and Bellingham to get in each others way by trying to perform the same role in the same area of the pitch causing confusion in attacking phases.


If league and champions league winners are playing like championship players throughout much of the tournament. I simply don’t understand how you can conclude it’s anything but the deficiencies of the coach

[Mac76]

I think you're slightly doing Spain down, I get maybe player-for-player others might be better, though I'm not sure who apart from England there's many teams, maybe France although they have big issues in attack - if the best they can come up with is Giroud, Greizman and an injured Mbappe they have problems IMO

that said I do believe it's a team game so part of the art of winning is doing the best with what you have

so when Greece won the Euros, or Denmark, i was perfectly happy for them as they did the very best with what they have

Spain played very well and that's exemplified by the high quality of their goals yesterday and through the tournament - it's no coincidence they won player and young player of the tournament

[HCZ_Reborn]

I think you're slightly doing Spain down, I get maybe player-for-player others might be better, though I'm not sure who apart from England there's many teams, maybe France although they have big issues in attack - if the best they can come up with is Giroud, Greizman and an injured Mbappe they have problems IMO

that said I do believe it's a team game so part of the art of winning is doing the best with what you have

so when Greece won the Euros, or Denmark, i was perfectly happy for them as they did the very best with what they have

Spain played very well and that's exemplified by the high quality of their goals yesterday and through the tournament - it's no coincidence they won player and young player of the tournament

The point is Spain winning this tournament is on a par maybe not so much with Denmark in Euro 92, or Greece in Euro 2004. But certainly with Portugal winning in 2016…it shouldn’t have happened and wouldn’t have if England or France had turned up (A player like Mbappe on form is good enough by himself to be the attacking fulcrum for France)

It’s a suspension of the usual footballing laws of gravity. Though predictable in that both Deschamps and Southgate should have been got rid of by their respective football associations long before this tournament.


It’s not knocking Spain they played very well….but they are quite short in terms of quality of the Italian side that won three years ago let alone the really great teams

[Letters]

Anyway...where were we?

https://x.com/paddypower/status/1812764826600460576

[Mac76]

It’s not knocking Spain they played very well….but they are quite short in terms of quality of the Italian side that won three years ago let alone the really great teams

I'm not sure they're much worse than that Italian side, they're a young team and less experienced and, as you've pointed out both England and Germany weren't far off from beating them, but... they didn't

plus I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those players - Williams and Yamal being obvious examples - go on to play at the biggest clubs - in fact we're in for Williams and I really hope we get him

the only thing I'd say is they're maybe not as strong at the back as Italy, France or Germany when at their best

[Mac76]

Anyway...where were we?

https://x.com/paddypower/status/1812764826600460576

ha, i was thinking earlier about how big our first game of the season will be, to be as consistent as Citeh it's a must-win

[HCZ_Reborn]

I'm not sure they're much worse than that Italian side, they're a young team and less experienced and, as you've pointed out both England and Germany weren't far off from beating them, but... they didn't

plus I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those players - Williams and Yamal being obvious examples - go on to play at the biggest clubs - in fact we're in for Williams and I really hope we get him

the only thing I'd say is they're maybe not as strong at the back as Italy, France or Germany when at their best

They have only one top player

Ruiz is a good player nothing more, Dani Olmo same


Williams is a player who hasn’t established himself before this tournament despite being 22. Yamal is a wonder kid prospect

Morata is a great big pile of shit. It’s the equivalent of France with Stephane Guivarich up front


That just isn’t the standard you would expect to be enough to win you an international tournament. Yes they have young players but not really in central midfield. Certainly no one who will come near the likes of Rodri, let alone Xavi, Iniesta etc


They’ve done fantastically well, but gravity has to reassert itself and this is as far as they go

[Letters]

But again we’ve established the basis for your opinion is based on the emotional impact of hearing silly people saying we should be winning this or that at a time when it wasn’t really remotely feasible.

The decades of failure have certainly jaded me. And we have had a frankly baffling national mindset that we should be winning these tournaments despite winning 1 in our entire history, and that was at home and required a bit of help from the "Russian" linesman.

No I don’t believe they think Southgate is the best person for the job. I don’t think you believe they think that either.

To misquote A Few Good Men, I'm an educated man, but I'm afraid I can't speak intelligently about the beliefs of the FA.

I don’t really see what Arteta has to do with this situation

It's an example of you spending much of the season saying someone should be booted out before finally agreeing, somewhat grudgingly, that they've done OK. Although from your comments it sounds like you'll be at it again the first time we slip this coming season. Just generally your predictions last season were patchy at best - I'm not saying mine are any better but you seem to have an unwavering confidence in them despite your record. In fact, I just had a look at the start of this thread and you started it with this post:

I don’t get why England are favourites, take away the impediment of Southgate and France have a stronger squad than us (we don’t have any depth in central midfield or defence). I’d like to see us play the attacking quartet of Saka, Foden, Kane and Bellingham….and at least we won’t be plagued with Harry Maguire and Mason Fucking Mount but I think we will do well to get further than the semis.

You backed France to beat Spain in the final, so you obviously rated Spain too. And now you're saying with another manager we would have won it because of how good our squad is.

other than your natural tendency towards conservatism which was on display when it was abundantly clear Wenger should go and you were quite late in realising it.

This is fair, although I still believe the criticism of Wenger was excessive at times. But he certainly went on too long and I was too patient with him. Part of my reticence was how big an upheaval a new club manager is. It's the same reason I'd be wary of replacing Arteta. I don't think he's a really top class manager but he's built a team who seem to believe in him and disrupting that could set us back. There was clear progress last season, he deserves a chance to build on it.

I don't think replacing an international manager who only works with the players intermittently is anywhere near as disruptive, and I also think that Southgate should go. I don't think he's going to take us any further. But I don't accept it's a foregone conclusion that another manager will. I've been hearing this shit about it being the manager's fault and if only we had a better manager then... for nearly 40 years now. There were times when that was true, but it often wasn't. Robson was nearly booted out after 1988 and then took us to the semi-finals in 1990, the first of the "if only..." trilogy in the 90s.
And I don't believe we'd necessarily have won the Euros under a different manager. As I've highlighted, at the start of this thread you didn't think we would win either and while you do claim Southgate is holding us back, you also cite stronger squads. So why are you now acting like we should have won it?

[HCZ_Reborn]

I said France have a better squad than us, I still kind of think that’s the case because we don’t have a striker on the level of Mbappe and they’ve got more top defenders.

However I was also clear (and said so long before this tournament) that Deschamps had squandered the French potential.

The France-Spain prediction was based on how I worked out how the draw would go…and that did factor in Spain triumphing against an undercooked Germany and a massively overrated Portugal.

And I’m saying that if Southgate had gone in 2022, a better coach would have maybe bridged the gap by finding a centre half partner for Stones, would have had White playing…would have had Trippier no where near the team and would have found a way to utilise the immense talent of Saka, Foden and Bellingham and yes I think that would have been enough to win us the competition, given what I’ve said in the past and continue to say about Didier Deschamps.


Maybe I’m being unfair but by your own admission you don’t want much club football, seeing some of the players England had to work with in the last two years, gives me the opinion that we can and perhaps even should win international tournaments and I can guarantee you that thought has never entered my head in relation to England prior to 2022. When average dross like Henderson and Mason Mount were slowly being phased out in favour of potential superstars like Bellingham, when I’ve seen Saka become a top player for club and country…when Rice has far exceeded the admittedly low expectations I had of him.

What I will say for Spain is that this is a team with an identity, England do not have that because our coach simply lacks the ability to give us one….it may all sound very harsh for someone who has got us to back to back Euro finals but ultimately being a runner up means fuck all…Valencia got to back to back champions league finals…it’s largely relegated to a pub quiz question. There is no guarantee we can win with a different manager but I think there’s enough evidence to guarantee we can’t win with this one.
At the risk of agreeing with Mac, I actually think the person we should go for is Jurgen Klopp. Someone like that I would feel confident in saying…I think we are going to win the next World Cup not just can win it but will win it. I do not expect us to get him, in that event I think Eddie Howe would be the next best bet.

[HCZ_Reborn]

In regards to Arteta, the first few games of last season almost finished me off. Near on gave me a full on nervous breakdown , it was worse than the end days of Emery, worst than the absolute nadir of Wenger….youd have to go back to Bruce Rioch for how bad we were.

Havertz was playing like a literal Spastic, I don’t mean just bad…I mean like someone who had been deprived oxygen to the brain in the womb and affected fine motor control. Playing Partey at right back? If that shit had continued I’d have had to have stepped away or I probably would have suffered a blood clot or something

I’m not going to pretend otherwise, I would have gladly seen Arteta sacked for that in August…fortunately he didn’t stick with this dirge and we only quite bad between September and the end of the year.


As for the rest of the season, I set out the criteria by which Arteta should stay in post and despite my doubt that he could meet those standards he did and fair play to him. He’s still far from allayed my doubts about him.