eenie

Yeah, that's right, only the quarter final was elsewhere (Rome).

Owen Hargreaves (yeah I know, he doesn't really count does he?)

Er, the Batistuta regen will be Argentinian (possibly Italian as second nationality)

Ah, ok. Yeah, he's a phenomenal talent, playing a starring role at one of the biggest and most successful clubs in the world. But I'm not sure that makes him unique in the way you're suggesting, at least as far as playing for England is concerned.

I guess I'm just curious as to what exactly you mean when you say that Bellingham is going to be something we haven't quite seen in the England team before.

More so than Rooney?

Honestly Ronay is just the worst. A good writer but his opinions on football are almost universally terrible. Liew is the same, except he's not clueless about football. He's clueless about all sports.

"I get knocked down, then I get up again" "He takes a lager drink, he takes a cider drink, he sticks a bumflare up his arse"

Well technically 2021 was hosted by half of Europe, it's just that London got all three of England's group games, plus two round of 16 games including England's, both semi finals and the final, so it effectively was a home tournament for England.

SouthGONE?

Wilshere was, iirc, much more of an Iniesta than a Xavi - he could carry the ball very nicely but didn't really have the range of passing. Was very tidy with the ball but not the sort to ping it about all over the place, as I remember it.

Also interesting given Shaw wasn't fit until game 5 but Southgate brought him along anyway. Although tbf England looked miles better once Shaw came in whereas Guehi didn't really put a foot wrong when he played.

Yeah I've not seen enough of him to judge myself, but in that clip he definitely looks a bit... switched off? There's an argument for making a late movement but you can't wait until Walker has taken a couple of steps to wind up for a big throw backwards before moving into space

Yep, drop it into his feet and you're winning a free kick or he's moving it back to Walker or onto Mainoo and you're in business. But fear of losing possession and getting done makes players do negative things. And that fear comes from the manager down.

The only defence (and it's not a criticism of Mainoo) is that Mainoo doesn't exactly show for the ball there, just walks into space just after Walker goes to throw it. He could have looked a bit more lively, perhaps?

It was terrible. But I still think Pickford's HOOOOF out for a goal kick was worse given that he was under zero pressure and had an easy 30 yard pass out left to a guy who was himself in 20 yards of space. We can definitely agree that the whole thing was dreadful.

As Barry says, it sums up England under Southgate this entire tournament (and earlier, tbf). Fear of losing despite being absolutely stacked with talent.

Yeah, it's him, an experienced professional football manager, making some terrible decisions. Those just so happen to coincide with the wishes of Joe Bloggs down the Dog And Duck, except Joe isn't getting paid £5m a year to mismanage one of the most talented groups of players in international football

I think he's had quite a lot of stick from the media in the past for being... erratic, but now that's he's unquestionably England's number one he seems to get a slightly easier ride of it. Probably helps that there aren't many rivals for that #1 spot.

I just don't think there's any way that Southgate picked a squad or an XI even though he didn't want to but the public were clamouring for it. That is just buuuuuuuuuullsh.t.

Do you think that Southgate did what he did because the public wanted it though? I don't for a second.

Think the blame for this particular passage of play is 100% on Pickford for lumping it to (a non-existent) Sarge rather than playing the easy pass out to the left. Unless you're blaming Walker for passing it to Pickford in the first place, knowing that Pickford's distribution has been utterly horrific for the whole tournament, in which case play on

Kane being unfit really, really handicapped England, didn't it? Played with 10 men for most of the tournament, had no dynamism across two-thirds of the attack. If Saka wasn't so bloody good then England would have offered zero in terms of pace or attacking threat.

I do wonder what the pub attendance was like last night. Pretty big I reckon.

I think the statto nerds need to come up with some sort of ratio of xG to xTalent or some similar baws, because England will definitely be bottom of the list for that particular metric. The fact that they're 8th for goals per 90 mins seems bonkers though. Highlights that it's not been a goalfest of a tournament by any means. But I guess that stat will always be skewed for teams that progress further in the competition as you don't typically do that without scoring. So maybe finishing 8th when you got further than 22 other teams isn't that impressive? Stats don't always tell the full story, and stats nerds (and football stats nerds in particular) are the worst people on Earth, but yeah, I think here they show that England were not a free-flowing attacking side