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World Cup 2018 Semi Finals

Feel sorry for the lads, they gave everything tonight but the better team won and we failed to do ourselves justice sadly.

We really struggled to link anything through the midfield tonight and I saw numerous occasions of Henderson standing directly behind the opposition when our defenders had the ball not showing for a pass, leaving them no option but to go long as Dele and Lingard made runs forward and nothing stuck, the balance in midfield was not working and left us exposed. I just feel on the night for whatever reason the occasion got to players and everyone's inexperience showed including the managers.

Good learning experience for all involved but we may never get a better chance to get to a WC final and had we performed tonight we probably would have.
 
People keep saying England won't get this chance again but I am not so sure. It also shows an arrogance and class system type view about the world.

Who ever you play in world cup quarter final and semis deserve to be there. I get the impression people think we would automatically lose against say traditional countries like Italy or Germany. It shows an inferiority complex I don't like.

Produce good players, work as a team without egos and use our natural advantage of so many professional football clubs to our advantage and we will be fine.

We need to improve the standard of tactical coaching in youth football.

But what is noticeable is that in youth football English teams are often now the most skilful but at club level but also the young English national teams.
 
I'm gutted, and we lost by some fine margins against a tough, tough team with some fantastic players. Modric has 111 international appearances. Mandzukic 88. Rakitic 97. How many in total did our starting 11 have? This is a young squad who went deep into the tournament - should have done better if we'd been more clinical - and has room to grow.
 
Danishfurniturelover said:
Him or Lallana would have made a big difference.
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Would have brought something else to the party. Didn't need Delph with Dier above him. Rashford looked like he might be the man. Had flashes of brilliance. Would love to see him working under Poch, but he failed to deliver in the latter stages. Sterling, although frustrating, probably should have stayed on. He seemed to have the beating of their back 4.
 
Huddy said:
Feel sorry for the lads, they gave everything tonight but the better team won and we failed to do ourselves justice sadly.

We really struggled to link anything through the midfield tonight and I saw numerous occasions of Henderson standing directly behind the opposition when our defenders had the ball not showing for a pass, leaving them no option but to go long as Dele and Lingard made runs forward and nothing stuck, the balance in midfield was not working and left us exposed. I just feel on the night for whatever reason the occasion got to players and everyone's inexperience showed including the managers.

Good learning experience for all involved but we may never get a better chance to get to a WC final and had we performed tonight we probably would have.
Click to expand...
This squad SHOULD improve in the coming years, so we SHOULD have more chances to get to a final.
 
90291Spur said:
This squad SHOULD improve in the coming years, so we SHOULD have more chances to get to a final.
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Not sure we will get a draw quite like this one for some time. We had an amazing draw. Should have beaten Croatia and setup a pot shot at France. Belgium were the only quality team we faced and that was a rotated side. What happened to all the big sides this WC? Germany, Brazil, Italy...the established nations bar France have not been in the mix.
 
Huddy said:
Good learning experience for all involved but we may never get a better chance to get to a WC final and had we performed tonight we probably would have.
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Nah. France would have beaten England in the final anyhow.

SpurMeUp said:
Not sure we will get a draw quite like this one for some time. We had an amazing draw. Should have beaten Croatia and setup a pot shot at France. Belgium were the only quality team we faced and that was a rotated side. What happened to all the big sides this WC? Germany, Brazil, Italy...the established nations bar France have not been in the mix.
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Yip. All of the stars aligned for England this time. It’ll be a long time before that happens again, you’d imagine
 
SpurMeUp said:
Not sure we will get a draw quite like this one for some time. We had an amazing draw. Should have beaten Croatia and setup a pot shot at France. Belgium were the only quality team we faced and that was a rotated side. What happened to all the big sides this WC? Germany, Brazil, Italy...the established nations bar France have not been in the mix.
Click to expand...
The draw this year was spendiferous, but as I said, we SHOULD get more chances to get to the final.
 
We know Germany, Spain, Italy and probably Holland will all improve so England can't be complacent, they be on the right track but they need to keep driving it forward.
There is still really weak areas,
goal scoring suport for Harry. You can say what you want but sterling does not cut it. Don't give me that stretches play guff either. There is no point stretching play if you can't pass or shoot. Vardy is a one system wonder, lingard = meh. rAshford looks promising.

Thankfully this tournament should be youngs last.
Never been convinced by stones and don't really see what the fuss is about with Maguire. Pickford looks good but the two in front give him some scary moments.
Crying out for someone to create space in the middle and use it to go forward. that's not henderson, but there is yonung talent coming through for that.
There's a lot of promise but I hope that the pre sure isn't heaped on them for the euros, its still a young side and it will take a bit longer.
 
the team deserve the praise they are getting, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

we played 1 worldcup contender (belgium) and lost. we played 2 decent teams (colombia, croatia), and couldnt find a win.

scored 12 goals, of which 9 were set pieces. we dont have any good midfielders, so we decided to bypass the midefield and use harry kane as a peter crouch/heskey target man. we're basically the international version of stoke (minus the thuggery).

had a route to the finals opened up like this for the golden generation, who knows what they could have acheived
 
Winks, Foden, Sessegnon and Sancho need to be in the first squad in the autumn. We can win Euro 2020 with a bit more midfield quality from the U21s
 
This is why I didn't share the hoopla about "football coming home" and all that crap because this was not a great squad of players and they never really played well, unless you count the game against Panama, which I don't. In saying that though, I really thought we threw it away. Completely stopped playing after half time. Couldn't Southgate see it? What did he do to remedy it. What was he saying when our defenders and Pickford were repeatedly hoofing the ball forward to the Croatian goal keeper? Really boils my tinkle to see such a collapse and nothing much being done. However, the Croatian coach did plenty. They couldn't make a five yard pass in the first half hour, but he saw England's weakness rejigged his formation and put England on the rack. We only got off for a brief moment before Trippier went off, when Rose started pinning them back, but too little too late.
 
We just started to drop too deep, you could see both goals coming.

Rose should have been brought on for Alli/Young to try and push the right back back.

Stones has to be playing every week to be able to get rid of these brain farts, I don’t understand why he just stopped.

We’ve done well, but can’t help but feel disappointed, Croatia were average but we didn’t take our chances.

We are desperate for a CM with the ability to pass forward - Winks/fogdon/Cook need to be looked at in the next few squads

Hopefully the Spurs players will see this as a positive orcwecare going to have a woeful start to the season whilst the management team try and lift them
 
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