England v Hungary 7:45pm

uncle_rico said:
Of course he can. He’s been coaching them for the last fortnight and before. He picks the team. If anyone knows if they are ready or if they are up for it, it is surely him.

Picking players who are unfit and playing players in positions that they’ve never played before is a sign that the manager doesn’t know what he’s doing.
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Nonsense
He’s spinning plates
 
In the long run it will probably be a positive. If we ground out a few uninspiring wins we wouldnt realsie the work still to be done before the world cup. Hopefully this will refocus everyone for when it matters
 
Regardless of the "tired", "end of long season", excuses it should now be obvious to Southgate that many of those players selected tonight should be sidelined. Tonight wasn't a complete one-off either. Some of the worst players tonight we're also awful earlier in the tournament - Saka, Philips, Sterling particularly.
 
RavsDad said:
Regardless of the "tired", "end of long season", excuses it should now be obvious to Southgate that many of those players selected tonight should be sidelined. Tonight wasn't a complete one-off either. Some of the worst players tonight we're also awful earlier in the tournament - Saka, Philips, Sterling particularly.
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Sterling shouldn't be anywhere near starting. Forward line needs to be Kane, Foden and Grealish. Maguire is finished as well.
 
Four terrible performances, but ultimately meaningless. Better to do that now than in the WC.

Lessons will be learned and Southgate judged by his performance in the tournament. Fit, motivated focussed players. No excuses then. Write this off.
 
Southgate obviously underestimated Hungary. He thought he could try out new players against them. They are top of the group above England, Italy and Germany so are a team in form.
 
LaPennaBianca said:
Four terrible performances, but ultimately meaningless. Better to do that now than in the WC.

Lessons will be learned and Southgate judged by his performance in the tournament. Fit, motivated focussed players. No excuses then. Write this off.
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Quite happy to accept that.

I'm sure my jitters would be wiped out if we peform well in September going in to the World Cup, but it does feel like the potential start of terminal decline right now.
 
It’s unimportant at then end of a long season. It’ll have no bearing on the World Cup (in which we’ll possibly lose to France (currently bottom of their nations league group too 🤷🏻‍♂️) in the QF). No worries. This is entirely unimportant.
 
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TeaCider said:
Quite happy to accept that.

I'm sure my jitters would be wiped out if we peform well in September going in to the World Cup, but it does feel like the potential start of terminal decline right now.
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I don't think it is a terminal decline. We'll see two spirited performances against Italy and Germany. The players were clearly not up for any of these games. If we see similar performances and results in September then we can be worried - but when the stakes are actually high we've seen England qualify with ease and reach the latter stages of tournaments.
 
LaPennaBianca said:
Four terrible performances, but ultimately meaningless. Better to do that now than in the WC.

Lessons will be learned and Southgate judged by his performance in the tournament. Fit, motivated focussed players. No excuses then. Write this off.
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We don’t have many games before the WC now though. Southgate seems to experiment all of the time, and doesn’t play our most gifted players. A good manager would be able to build a team round Grealish and Foden, not keep them on the bench, and persist with the likes of Philips, Rice and Mount.

There simply isn’t enough time or games to even consider changing the manager now, but finally Southgate has been found out. Us Boro fans could see how many mistakes he made because of his need to be clever and try to prove everyone wrong. I’m pretty sure he‘ll be gone by Christmas.
 
uncle_rico said:
We don’t have many games before the WC now though. Southgate seems to experiment all of the time, and doesn’t play our most gifted players. A good manager would be able to build a team round Grealish and Foden, not keep them on the bench, and persist with the likes of Philips, Rice and Mount.

There simply isn’t enough time or games to even consider changing the manager now, but finally Southgate has been found out. Us Boro fans could see how many mistakes he made because of his need to be clever and try to prove everyone wrong. I’m pretty sure he‘ll be gone by Christmas.
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You can't think Rice has been bad for England? He was superb last summer.

Foden trained twice this international break, that's why he was on the bench. He will be a mainstay of the team for a long time. Grealish has been excellent from the bench - why change that?

I agree that Mount and Philips have been poor, but they don't play in the same positions as Grealish and Foden. Bellingham offers real competition now..

For me, Southgate's earned the right to make mistakes, and the players are allowed some bad performances.

I agree that the tinkering is frustrating, but the tournaments have shown that GS doesn't experiment then..and his decisions were a few pens away from silverware.
 
uncle_rico said:
We don’t have many games before the WC now though. Southgate seems to experiment all of the time, and doesn’t play our most gifted players. A good manager would be able to build a team round Grealish and Foden, not keep them on the bench, and persist with the likes of Philips, Rice and Mount.

There simply isn’t enough time or games to even consider changing the manager now, but finally Southgate has been found out. Us Boro fans could see how many mistakes he made because of his need to be clever and try to prove everyone wrong. I’m pretty sure he‘ll be gone by Christmas.
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Only agree with you about Phillips on this
 
uncle_rico said:
We don’t have many games before the WC now though. Southgate seems to experiment all of the time, and doesn’t play our most gifted players. A good manager would be able to build a team round Grealish and Foden, not keep them on the bench, and persist with the likes of Philips, Rice and Mount.

There simply isn’t enough time or games to even consider changing the manager now, but finally Southgate has been found out. Us Boro fans could see how many mistakes he made because of his need to be clever and try to prove everyone wrong. I’m pretty sure he‘ll be gone by Christmas.
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Agree about persisting with players too much but not fully with the names mentioned. For me Sterling has been poor/not started for City for awhile, he’s lucky to be in the squad. Playing with right backs at left back consistently, this could have been a chance to call up some untried left backs just to see how they’d do.
Persisting with the same tactics over and over with just the personnel changing, Southgates not learnt how to impact a game tactically.
 
As embarrassed as I am by our recent performances, and as much as he has to foot some of the blame for it, I do think that Southgate has a point that no previous England manager has had as much pressure on them in terms of results outside of the tournament/qualifiers.

The introduction of the Nations League has removed a solid crop of friendly matches where there was room for practice and experiments, largely on the back of years of fans whinging about friendlies taking place.

I like the Nations League, but there's now only a handful of games where the result has no bearing for a team.
That's partly down to the impact of the pandemic, but it's something to be considered.

At the same time, I don't think it excuses the performances, he was happy to claim it as two semi-finals in the first tournament when we beat Spain and Croatia.
 
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