Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

It's flying garden chair day - England v Croatia

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Seems like someone is confident in their club signing Sancho.

    Comment


      I'm really happy with that result.

      Scotland must step up, and if they don't, they're as good as Croatia.

      Comment


        Also... Tyrone Mings? Fucking Brilliant. He saved themon 6 occasions. Who does he play for?

        (Got to jettison the goalkeeper. He's going to cost you one.) AndModric was shite?! Who knew?!

        You lucky bastards.

        Edit: Seriously, TyroneMings was fucking brilliant. All over everything.
        Last edited by Gerontophile; 14-06-2021, 02:05.

        Comment


          Yeah, sorry. Pickford has to fuck off. He can't kick, his catching is only through awareness, and he's a wee shite.

          Why is there no better? Isn't there a guy from... that's the fucking point. Kaspar threw one in, and he's not even English. What's going on with this? Didn't England used to have all the keepers?

          *Terms and conditions, and Rinat Dassaev, apply

          Comment


            Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
            When people have given their hot take, they don't like to have to admit that their hot take was wrong.
            Anyone else's ironymeter just exploded?

            Comment


              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
              Southgate was very lucky that they won the game. It reminded me of someone firing an ak-47 straight up in the air, and standing there as the bullets hit the ground all around him. Picking Kieran trippier at left back instead of two actual left backs who had just played in european finals was something that you will get hammered for if you don't win. Leaving jadon sancho out of the matchday 23 was another inexplicable decision. But picking Sterling ahead of fan favourite Jack "Jackadonna" Grealish was the one that was going to be the biggest problem for him if they didn't win. Sterling scoring the goal was really important for Southgate, as the hook was about to come out for Sterling, and Jackadonna was about to come on when he actually scored.

              Kalvin phillips played well in the bits of the game I saw, and that bit of play to set up the goal was very slick. And again given what I saw, he seemed like a reasonable enough shout for man of the match. It's just that if it had been someone other than sterling on the end of that pass, I don't think we'd have heard so much about the pass. Had it been exactly the same move and pass to say Phil Foden, and he'd done exactly the same as sterling, I think the focus would have been more on how the new Gazza had burst onto the world scene, and the pass would have kind of slipped by. I wonder how much of the attention phillips got for that fine bit of play is down to a lot of people not wishing to give sterling credit for scoring. When people have given their hot take, they don't like to have to admit that their hot take was wrong.

              In the first half Croatia really struggled to handle england when they were attacking, struggled to get the ball back off them when england were passing it around, and struggled to break them down when they had the ball. It can't be stressed just how useful it is to southgate to have most of his team playing in club sides that like to make 600-700 passes a game. It's done wonders for england's ability to pass the ball to each other, even though they play for different teams, and don't spend a lot of time playing with each other, just like the england teams of the past.

              The thing that struck me though was the level of Euro 96 nostalgia, and perhaps the most striking bit was a shot of a newspaper page after the shitty opening draw with Switzerland, which was a massive headline that said something along the lines "Fat drunk Gypsy madman Gazza betrays saintly tactical genius Honest 'el Tel'." And then I was sent this tweet
              https://twitter.com/IandrewDiceClay/status/1404029382323212289

              It's funny how people's perceptions of things change over time isn't it?
              That was Alan Green, though: legendary curmudgeon.

              Comment


                I've seen a lot of comments about the selection of Trippier. He seemed to have a decent game to me.

                Yeah, he was selected over 2 left backs who started European finals last month. But Luke Shaw's team didn't win their final and I don't remember anyone claiming Ben Chilwell was the crucial difference for Chelsea in their final.
                Last edited by Patrick Thistle; 14-06-2021, 06:43.

                Comment


                  It was a lovely day yesterday. Family barbecue, glorious sunshine and all the neighbouring houses getting into the spirit of supporting their national side in a football match, kids with their faces painted, playing their own pre match game before kick off etc.

                  This is my experience of most tournaments though. Good fun, around good people, all hoping England will win but all realistic to know we'll fall short again at some point. I'm well aware there are arseholes and violence in our society but I give them as little attention as they merit.

                  I thought England played well and deserved their narrow victory. I'm sure many will focus on whatever negative aspect of the performance bothers them the most but in hot conditions, against the last side to beat them in a major tournament, England won their first ever opening game at the Euros. Its something to be happy about. For some of us, obviously

                  Comment


                    Oh, the pre-internet days, when we'd have to tune into whinging Alan Green to know what the score is. "The score is now 4-3, after yet another goal in this absolutely shambolic display of poor defending." That's not an actual quote, but it wouldn't surprise me. He really knew how to suck the enjoyment out of everything.

                    Comment


                      Originally posted by Gerontophile View Post
                      Yeah, sorry. Pickford has to fuck off. He can't kick, his catching is only through awareness, and he's a wee shite.

                      Why is there no better? Isn't there a guy from... that's the fucking point. Kaspar threw one in, and he's not even English. What's going on with this? Didn't England used to have all the keepers?
                      Nick Pope missed out due to a knee injury. He may have been first choice, though as another goal kick sailed straight out of play yesterday, I remembered that Southgate prefers Pickford due to his superior distribution.

                      Comment


                        If Southgate had played Chilwell/Shaw, Grealish and whoever else people were clamouring for there'd have been yeah buts, too. I thought Trippier did fine overall, too. Southgate obviously thought what he'd lose in terms of angles by having a right footer at LB was worth the benefits he envisaged vs Croatia. I reckon he's going to mix and match a bit in the group games, so maybe the team in midweek will be slightly different. I think Alan Green's football glass was usually half empty and I often pondered how different actions/performances that he described at the time looked when seen on MoTD etc. Mind, England Scotland 96 wasn't good first half, but perhaps not as apocalyptic as Green, who seemed to commentate for himself, thought.

                        Early doors is my mantra at the moment.
                        Last edited by Sixmartletsandaseagull; 14-06-2021, 08:48.

                        Comment


                          It was a decent if uninspiring performance. 'Job done', one might say.

                          Why is Luka Modric banging on about England having 'an unfair advantage'? (And where does he stand on all the other nations playing at home?)

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Bizarre Löw Triangle View Post

                            The English national football team is a weird thing cos it's like an avatar for England's national id. Like it's the medium through which Britain's national honour is judged and everything boils down to avenging British national humiliations and reliving past British glories. It's honestly very strange as an outsider looking in and it doesn't happen in other sports.

                            Like England reached world cup finals in two sports in 2019 and though i didn't really want them to win, there definitely wasn't the same overwhelming sense of threat you get when England are doing well in football (for the most part i think people largely didn't care that much).
                            I had to do my "test to release" in Liverpool Street yesterday and decided to drive there to avoid public transport. Parked my car opposite the "Box Park" venue in Shoreditch and it was mayhem at 11:30am.

                            What strikes me in comparison to other countries is the 20-something maleness of it all, which didn't exist in Portugal nor Egypt. The national team in both those occasions was largely a family occasion. I can think of one exception in Portugal, when the big screen was in the main park and gangs of second-generation immigrant kids would come in from the poorer suburbs.

                            On the other hand, interest in the tournament for Portuguese and Egyptian families was totally in the national team and not the tournament as a whole. I'd estimate 80% + of the 20-something males wearing England shirts outside the Box Park had watched every game of the tournament in the run up to England's match and will continue to do so. It's unique to England and also the UK, but unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there is an unfulfilled constant expectation that England could win a major championship which transforms itself into quite a tense and xenophobic demonstration, because doing well is not good enough, England really should have won something since 1966.

                            When most of these 20-something lads get a girlfriend/wife/child, they'll see the bigger picture and wonder why they were so hung up on the belief that immense pleasure and satisfaction could be derived from their nation winning a football tournament. But until then, they're dying for England to be victorious in the same way they're dying for a shag.

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                              s, I must confess that I didn't quite understand the analogy, given that England played quite well and the team selection proved to be an effective one. It wasn't a lucky win.


                              It's an incredibly reckless and dangerous thing that leaves you looking very cool if you pull it off, but may kill you pointlessly. And if your particularly unlucky the US miltary might fire a drone missile at you.

                              And any win where your forward drills your only goal, in off the keepers hand is a lucky win. Two inches higher, or the keeper having his arm two inches lower and it's not a goal at all, and is in fact just a draw, and that's when the recriminations start, that's when all your hostages to fortune get slaughtered.

                              The worst recent example of this involves thomas tuchel, and the FA cup final. Tuchel switched azpilicueta to right wing back, and reece James to the right side of the back three. He did this to prevent a repeat of the last FA cup final where arsenal kept dropping the ball over azpilicueta's head for aubameyang to chase. Jamie vardy may not have scored more than a handful of goals since november, but he hadn't stopped doing all the other Jamie Vardy things that mean that the leicester attacking game plan was still based around him, and it still worked. As it turned out vardy was neutralized completely, and leicester scored their goal from a ridiculously brilliant 30 yarder into the top corner, by a player running from deep with the ball.

                              Thing is Chelsea didn't win that game, and a lot of people were grumbling that he had concentrated too much on stopping his opponents, and been too negative as if you ignore eliminating leicester as an occasional attacking force completely, he robbed chelsea of Reece James' "Trent alexander arnold level crossing" as Pat Nevin put it. Now a cynic might suspect that kasper schmeichel not made an absurdly brilliant save, or had chilwell held his run by a fraction of a second, then the switching of james and azpilicueta would have been considered to be just another example of the attention to detail of a tactical genius. You know, the stuff that people had been saying about him when he was making little tweaks in every game and they worked. The most disturbing aspect of it though is that people managed to create an imaginary super creative version of reece james to rhetorically beat him over the head with. The thing is that tuchel would be astonished to hear this line of argument, because james set up one goal under tuchel, against barnsley at the start of his tenure. Aaron Wan Bissaka sets up more goals than reece james.

                              I was surprised to hear this from Nevin, who I generally like and find quite reasonable and thoughful who while explaining the line of argument, kind of agreed with it, which disappointed me, because it's utter nonsense, and yet another example of people using tactics not as a framework for understanding both sides taking part in the game, and their actions, but as a post hoc explanation for why the losing manager is a loser. He also mentioned that if tuchel didn't win the the final league game and qualify for the CL, or the CL final, then it was unlikely that he would be there by christmas, which was not something that he approved of, but said it was after all the 'chelsea way'.

                              This sort of thing is something that maybe we should have a wider discussion about at some point. Scoreboard journalism is one of the most depressing things about football, As it is just a big carnival of bad thinking that people then go on to apply to other aspects of their lives, and particularly to the world of politics. it gets in the way of progress, and it masks the activitities of conmen, charlatans, and generally just makes us all stupider.
                              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 14-06-2021, 10:36.

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post



                                It's an incredibly reckless and dangerous thing that leaves you looking very cool if you pull it off, but may kill you pointlessly. And if your particularly unlucky the US miltary might fire a drone missile at you.

                                And any win where your forward drills your only goal, in off the keepers hand is a lucky win. Two inches higher, or the keeper having his arm two inches lower and it's not a goal at all, and is in fact just a draw, and that's when the recriminations start, that's when all your hostages to fortune get slaughtered.

                                The worst recent example of this involves thomas tuchel, and the FA cup final. Tuchel switched azpilicueta to right wing back, and reece James to the right side of the back three. He did this to prevent a repeat of the last FA cup final where arsenal kept dropping the ball over azpilicueta's head for aubameyang to chase. Jamie vardy may not have scored more than a handful of goals since november, but he hadn't stopped doing all the other Jamie Vardy things that mean that the leicester attacking game plan was still based around him, and it still worked. As it turned out vardy was neutralized completely, and leicester scored their goal from a ridiculously brilliant 30 yarder into the top corner, by a player running from deep with the ball.

                                Thing is Chelsea didn't win that game, and a lot of people were grumbling that he had concentrated too much on stopping his opponents, and been too negative as if you ignore eliminating leicester as an occasional attacking force completely, he robbed chelsea of Reece James' "Trent alexander arnold level crossing" as Pat Nevin put it. Now a cynic might suspect that kasper schmeichel not made an absurdly brilliant save, or had chilwell held his run by a fraction of a second, then the switching of james and azpilicueta would have been considered to be just another example of the attention to detail of a tactical genius. You know, the stuff that people had been saying about him when he was making little tweaks in every game and they worked. The most disturbing aspect of it though is that people managed to create an imaginary super creative version of reece james to rhetorically beat him over the head with. The thing is that tuchel would be astonished to hear this line of argument, because james set up one goal under tuchel, against barnsley at the start of his tenure. Aaron Wan Bissaka sets up more goals than reece james.

                                I was surprised to hear this from Nevin, who I generally like and find quite reasonable and thoughful who while explaining the line of argument, kind of agreed with it, which disappointed me, because it's utter nonsense, and yet another example of people using tactics not as a framework for understanding both sides taking part in the game, and their actions, but as a post hoc explanation for why the losing manager is a loser. He also mentioned that if tuchel didn't win the the final league game and qualify for the CL, or the CL final, then it was unlikely that he would be there by christmas, which was not something that he approved of, but said it was after all the 'chelsea way'.

                                This sort of thing is something that maybe we should have a wider discussion about at some point. Scoreboard journalism is one of the most depressing things about football, As it is just a big carnival of bad thinking that people then go on to apply to other aspects of their lives, and particularly to the world of politics. it gets in the way of progress, and it masks the activitities of conmen, charlatans, and generally just makes us all stupider.

                                "It's an incredibly reckless and dangerous thing that leaves you looking very cool if you pull it off, but may kill you pointlessly. And if your particularly unlucky the US miltary might fire a drone missile at you."

                                A football team manager played an experienced, predominantly right-sided, full-back on the left in a calculated gamble, believing that a more defensively-adept player might be the best call against tough opposition rather than a specialist but more attack-minded left-back . Even allowing for messageboard exaggeration for effect or simple hyperbole, the two situations are hardly comparable.

                                All of Southgate's moderate gambles paid off. Trippier was solid, Mings had a good game in a back four, the Rice-Phillips partnership was extremely effective and Sterling played well and scored the winning goal.

                                And as for it being a lucky win, behave yourself. Croatia barely troubled the England goal, England came close to scoring on a number of other occasions and a 'keeper getting an ineffective hand to a powerful shot on target after an inch-perfect through ball is hardly (a) unusual or (b) unlucky.

                                I'm sure that if you try really, really hard you'll be able to recall the odd instance of Manchester United being the better side in a game, creating good chances, defending well but only winning 1-0.
                                Last edited by Nocturnal Submission; 14-06-2021, 12:57.

                                Comment


                                  Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                  I've seen a lot of comments about the selection of Trippier. He seemed to have a decent game to me.

                                  Yeah, he was selected over 2 left backs who started European finals last month. But Luke Shaw's team didn't win their final and I don't remember anyone claiming Ben Chilwell was the crucial difference for Chelsea in their final.
                                  I think you're missing the point. England used to have to play right footed players at left back, because england didn't have any left footed left backs. There's little reason to play a right footed right back in that position, if you have two left footed left backs who are playing at the top end of domestic and european football, and you've brought both of them to the tournament.

                                  Comment


                                    Maybe they were both knackered and just needed a few more days off?

                                    Comment


                                      Maybe he wanted Trippier's ice cool dead ball skills (well, it worked once against Croatia)

                                      Comment


                                        Weird how playing wingers on the "wrong" side is fine but fullbacks not.

                                        It was only a lucky win in the sense that if Sterling could actually control his feet when given time to think, it could have been 3-0.

                                        Comment


                                          Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post

                                          I think you're missing the point. England used to have to play right footed players at left back, because england didn't have any left footed left backs. There's little reason to play a right footed right back in that position, if you have two left footed left backs who are playing at the top end of domestic and european football, and you've brought both of them to the tournament.
                                          No, I got your point. I just didnt agree with it. Perhaps you missed that Trippier is more experienced in tournament football and has played against Croatia before.

                                          Comment


                                            Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                            Maybe they were both knackered and just needed a few more days off?
                                            In fairness to southgate, he didn't pick any of the players returning from injury, just for the sake of it, but it's unlikely that shaw and chilwell are any more exhausted than sterling, mount, foden, walker and stones, who all played at the same time as chilwell, and more recently than shaw.

                                            Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                                            A football team manager played an experienced, predominantly right-sided, full-back on the left in a calculated gamble, believing that a more defensively-adept player might be the best call against tough opposition rather than a specialist but more attack-minded left-back . Even allowing for messageboard exaggeration for effect or simple hyperbole, the two situations are hardly comparable.
                                            The point I was making, particularly in reference to the Tuchel example, is that you can make the right switch, for the right reasons, but if you don't win it will be used as a stick to batter you with. The converse of course is that if you make the wrong switch for the wrong reason, but you win, it becomes a stroke of tactical genius. And It's quite a stretch to say that kieran trippier is a better defensive left back than luke shaw or ben chilwell. He's hardly ever played the position for a start. Something that surely outstrips having played in a tournament three years ago on the other side. International football isn't more difficult than club football, quite the opposite.

                                            And it's not just at left back. Picking Sterling ahead of jack grealish was the right thing to do, for the right reasons. (Sterling is much better than grealish, and grealish is still coming back from a lengthy injury, and on the basis of the warm up games is still about as sharp as a spoon). but if sterling hadn't scored that goal, and if england hadn't won the game, he would have been hammered with that as well.

                                            Remember we're not talking about a calm sane rational situation here, we're talking about england at a major european football tournament, where every piece of bad thinking, and illogical contortion will be engaged in if things don't go well.
                                            Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 14-06-2021, 12:29.

                                            Comment


                                              Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                                              Weird how playing wingers on the "wrong" side is fine but fullbacks not.
                                              It's because the full backs are supposed to be able to go on the outside when the wingers move infield on their stronger foot. A wrong footed full back can't go down the outside, but has to check back to cross the ball. I can see why you might favour an 'inverted' full back to counteract an 'inverted winger' but The defensive side is supposed to be dealt with by the centre half backing up the full back.
                                              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 14-06-2021, 12:31.

                                              Comment


                                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

                                                No, I got your point. I just didnt agree with it. Perhaps you missed that Trippier is more experienced in tournament football and has played against Croatia before.
                                                And has been playing against the oppositions primary player in league matches for the last couple of years.

                                                Comment


                                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post

                                                  Remember we're not talking about a calm sane rational situation here, we're talking about england at a major european football tournament, where every piece of bad thinking, and illogical contortion will be engaged in if things don't go well.
                                                  Well, yes. Mainly by you.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Oi pebblethefish , that's unfair. TAB will also engage every possible contortion if things do go well.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X