atypical_boro
Well-known member
Scotland got it spot on? They didn’t score and now need to beat the World Cup finalists to stand a chance of qualifying.A couple of points in the cold light of day. Firstly England were bad last night and more on that in a bit. Secondly to blame personnel or team selection or formation is clutching at straws.
England should be able to pick any of their first 14 or 15 and play better against a team of Scotlands ability. It wasn't the team selection nor the formation.
Scotland played like 10 outfield players who were playing as a team. They did not allow gaps to appear between their lines. They moved forward and attacked as a team and dropped as a team but never too deep.
Tactically Scotland got it spot on.
England with the 11 players that started or the 11 players that ended the game should have done better.
There had been some nonsense about it being Scotland final and they were bound to raise their game.... These are professional footballers. Anyone who thinks that Scotland were more up for it than England are either wrong or you need to find another country to support. An England national team that can't get up to play Scotland isn't an England team. I'll leave the England fans to decide which it was.
On the individual players. Kane is clearly not right and needs dropping and if he has been training like that he should be nowhere near the pitch for England.
Southgate should have changed things more. The changes he made were in effective but they would have been in effective whatever changes he had made. England were too slow and that never changed in the 90 minutes at any time. They're was 10 minutes at the start where England created a couple of chances and 10 minutes in the second half. That's not good enough against a team like Scotland.
Is Gareth Southgate tactically useless? Of course he isn't. He was let down by the players endeavour. You may disagree with the team selection but grealish made no difference, not 1 bit.
Once the players had laboured for an hour with no real spark or desire to put their bodies on the line there was nothing Southgate could do to change that with 5 substitutes.
Did Southgate give the players the wrong messaging? I don't know, but I would have to doubt that.
England were poor Scotland were excellent and deserved to win the game.
Not sure you can play the performance at Southgate's feet entirely the players on the pitch have to take a lot of responsability.
No offence but I think a lot of Scottish folk are getting a bit carried away about a goalless draw.