The 2004 squad that went out because Rooney and Owen got injured you mean?
Is Gareth Southgate a shiite England manager?
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He's crap but probably the right personality for an International job. He wouldn't last 2 seasons in a PL job
don't remember Owen getting injured?
Ah you're right. It's Rooney who was subbed to injury and England lost any and all attacking threat and spent the rest of the game defending for their lives
And do you remember who won it in 2004? Greece! They did not have Rooney, they did not have Owen either. England's second squad had better players than Greece. England lost to France and then lost again vs Portugal and got eliminated. Greece beat Portugal in the premiere, beat France in the quarter finals, then beat Portugal again in the final. But England couldn't do it because they were missing xxx player, or because they didn't have two world class players in every position. Well ... actually organization and mental preparation beats talent every time. And what I am saying is that this Southgate team seems to be well organized. The 2004 team had more talent but less organization.
Another tournament, another time the shite manager has got further than the “legitimate world class” one
I rate Luis Enrique and today was one of those days for Spain but can you imagine the abuse Southgate would get for losing to Morocco?
Southgate is getting abuse for winning 3-0 against the African champions. Never mind losing to the quarter finalists.
It’s so stupid that so many dig in on it.
He’s kinda like Solskjaer.
On paper he looks nothing special, pretty ordinary and not really someone who wows you.
Punches above his weight at times.
Has some truly awful moments.
Seems to rely on individual moments of magic from his team.
Has had his favourites and neglects the other options (Has dropped Mount though)
Lot of people um and ah whether he’s pretty decent or he’s awful but lucky because of the players he has.
Every time he gets your hopes up, he slams you back down
Every time you think he’s getting sacked, he pulls a huge result from nothing.
And you get this feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach that it’s not sustainable and at some point sooner or later it’s going to go horribly wrong as you first feared.
On paper he looks nothing special, pretty ordinary and not really someone who wows you.
Punches above his weight at times.
Has some truly awful moments.
Seems to rely on individual moments of magic from his team.
Has had his favourites and neglects the other options (Has dropped Mount though)
Lot of people um and ah whether he’s pretty decent or he’s awful but lucky because of the players he has.
Every time he gets your hopes up, he slams you back down
Every time you think he’s getting sacked, he pulls a huge result from nothing.
And you get this feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach that it’s not sustainable and at some point sooner or later it’s going to go horribly wrong as you first feared.
Very much. Bolded is hilarious.
It's not a binary issue, you can't just remove him from the credits of where England have placed in the last two tournaments. I have said before he did an outstanding job at WC2018 where we had Jesse Lingard as our fecking no. 10.
I don't think ANYONE could argue that his management of crunch games in times gone by has been lacking, and letting us run out of legs against Italy with the options available on the bench was unforgiveable imo. Wasn't so much 'dropping the ball' as dropping the ball and backheeling it into his own net.
If you think I want him to lose so I can gloat you're badly mistaken. I want him to win obviously. I don't have much faith after the last two massive games and how he handled them but if he downs France I will be mightily impressed.
Regarding 04 Golden Generation squad, that year Rooney was electric, but I'll never forget the sheer volume of utterly dire performances that the 'golden generation' racked up over those years. This SQUAD is much, much better. World class players, options off the bench. Read something somewhere that said Southgate was involved with some of the changes made at national level to the way football is coached and the qualities we want from our football over generations, so there's always that. Go figure.
I still think he started to include Foden over Mount after a backlash from the media and Sterling isn't available. I thought the team he put out vs Senegal made a lot of sense, I just don't think he'd have picked such a team if he didn't feel pressured to. We'll see if his defensive pragmatism is enough to get us over the line vs France. I bloody hope so
I would say that Southgate is nothing like Solskjaer.
Southgate has put in place a number of methods in the England set up. In particular a path that brings in younger players through into English team.
And he has created a club environment such that players want to play instead of pretending to be injured.
All Ole did was to all player power to take over the club.
But, but Southgate hammered Iran 
He's obviously been an excellent England manager, there's no other argument that can be objectively made. He doesn't even have that good a squad - the reason they're so competitive is because of him. Look at the defence and central midfield options and depth compared to previous England sides. The only reason people don't rate him is because his substandard club management career. But then are Hansi Flick and Luis Enrique terrible managers who were never any good because they've both flopped here? Of course not. Sometimes different jobs suit different people.
England fans have no chill or are just a miserable bunch. It takes a warped sense of reality to think reaching the final of the Euros and at least a WC QF appearance vs the favorites isn't good enough. If England somehow wins the WC, I imagine some will say they won in spite of him.
Don’t be so utterly ridiculous. Whining about hypotheticals that haven’t happened (and would never happen).
If we win the WC Southgate should be knighted and will go down as an International great.
People are basing their opinions of him on what he’s done thus far, not on scenarios that have never occurred.
His squad is excellent. He’s been blessed with an incredibly talented generation who are all well coached at club level by brilliant managers who dominate Europe’s best league.
He’s also been blessed with very kind routes through tournaments.
So no different from 2004-2010 when England’s players at various times were under Ferguson, peak Mourinho, peak Wenger, Hiddink, Benitez…He doesn’t have a noticeably more “incredibly talented squad” either - neither Stones nor Maguire would have got a game for England in most of my lifetime, while the keeper is merely ok.
As for kind routes I don’t remember England teams of the past having particularly hard luck. Were Scolari’s Portugal that good? Bringing on some Spurs reject in 2004, and they won nothing while Scolari looked like a mug when he tried his hand managing in the Premier League.
I wouldnt take this critism so seriously. English fans are probarbly the fans that has the least knowledge about the game anyways.
yeah by stacked I mean, a lot of depth. The 2004 squad drop off from Beckham, Neville and Cole was huge. The strikers though, the drop off is incredible, after Rooney the rest could hardly qualified as international strikers
You sure do have a bad habit of not reading the posts you respond to.
Agreed. It's ludicrous to expect England to play some free-flowing style with the players they have.
About half of the England's defence (Walker, Stones) play for Man City, where the tactics by their coach Guardiola emphasizes on building from the back., so this shouldn't be an issue for the England NT.
Objectively, what he's done thus far should be considered successful.
You've sort of backed up the opposite point to the one you were trying to make there.
I would say most are generally happy we are where we are, despite the dull USA game. It’s always far more miserable online.
Come on France whoop whoop!
yes, had England done poorly I definitely would have blamed the manager. That's what it means when I said "they did well in spite of him, not because of him". I thought this was quite clear
Hear Hear!
Squad is excellent in certain areas, particularly in attack however the defence is very average and midfield is functional at best - yes Bellingham is a big talent but around him are fairly average players and he has really no strength in depth in midfield or defence at all.
Having a stacked attack is the most important part of any team, especially at international level. You can make up for average defenders and midfielders through tactics, but a lack of quality forward options will see you fail to beat Switzerland and eliminated by North Macedonia
Southgate has one bad tournament game, the final against Italy, where he was too slow to react and made the wrong changes at the wrong time. Even so, it was still a final against Italy, even if he made all the right moves there's no guarantee the game would have gone differently. England lost on penalties in the end, it's not like they got smoked...
There's no guarantee of anything, it's all would have, could have should haves but Southgate's performance in that game was more than bad. It was abysmal. Awful use of the bench and totally reactive tactics. It's not unfair to say that whatever the odds were when England went ahead, every decision or inability to inspire a different response from his team after that shifted the odds significantly in Italy's favour. It was a proper managerial shocker.
He's done a good job on results, certainly, but that was a moment where some of his shortcomings in a defining moment really showed up. We can only hope he learnt from it.
I mean, again, his mistake was trusting his defence and trying to hit Italy with pace on the counter as opposed to bringing in Graelish and Henderson and try to contest the midfield and possession. In the end England conceded on a corner kick, the defence held up fine otherwise and even after he made those changes England still struggled to contest possession and couldn't break down Italy's defence except in transition...at the end of the day, they were facing a team of similar quality, in great form, and lost on penalties...
Maybe in league football but not in tournament football. When was the last time a team with such an unbalanced squad won anything? Look at Argentina, for years they’ve had some of the best forwards in the game and yet they won diddly squat. Messi only won the copa América in 2021.
It’s obviously not Southgates fault but England are not winning anything with Maguire, for example, at the back. Our back ups are even worse. Euro 2004 we had Sol Campbell, John Terry, Ledley King, Jamie Carragher and (we would have had) Rio Ferdinand. Every single one of them shits on what we have right now. Left Back Ashley Cole, need I say more.
Our midfield is also vastly weaker than it’s been in a long time because of depth. Literally Rice and Bellingham. Henderson is ok but really we shouldn’t be hanging on to and relying on someone who is about to retire from international football. Phillips? I’d rather have Gareth Barry and that’s saying something. Then after that we are shoehorning 10s into 8s with bad results. What we left at home isn’t exactly great either.
Hopefully by the next tournament we have a few more breakout stars like Jude but that’s clutching at straws really.
He was slow with his subs, which is a theme with him where they have often ranged from incredibly reactive or late in the day to complete head scratchers.
Also going completely reactive after taking a lead is always going to be a stick to beat you with if it doesn't work out. It was never going to work out from that early in the game.
Yes the result is not within the realms of being poor, we lost to Italy on pens in a final, I get that. He still gets a D- on the day for a bad managerial performance. It wasn't just neutral management and the game going against us, it was actively bad. We can't ever say that we would have won, but it didn't help.
I would name and category him as a defensive minded manager.
Just in the last matches in the world cup. I start to line up a more offensive start line up XI.
Before that. Rice and Phillips as 2 defensive cm player. Why it was so difficult to score and break down England defend. And big reason why Maguire is playing better for England than for United.
England as a team and collective is better and more tight than United defend. Only if McFred hit the max level and give United defend a solid and tight shelter infront of them.
So its a balance there. Not too defensive, neither too offensive and open. Give room and space to quick and skill ful player to roam, shine and doing well.
Just in the last matches in the world cup. I start to line up a more offensive start line up XI.
Before that. Rice and Phillips as 2 defensive cm player. Why it was so difficult to score and break down England defend. And big reason why Maguire is playing better for England than for United.
England as a team and collective is better and more tight than United defend. Only if McFred hit the max level and give United defend a solid and tight shelter infront of them.
So its a balance there. Not too defensive, neither too offensive and open. Give room and space to quick and skill ful player to roam, shine and doing well.
Bang on.
Loss on Southgate again in my opinion. The team does well in spite of him, not because of him.
At the 60th minute he needs to take Henderson and Foden off, who were tired/not in the game, and bring on Rashford and Grealish to kill the game when we were on top.
Instead what does he do? Waits until the 80th minute to bring on fecking Sterling who's been finished for a year and Mount who does nothing. And for Saka as well who was our best player.
He like Santos for Portugal is holding England, nice guy and a good manager and all but he's Ole for England. Sad, because this is the last world cup we'll have with a prime Kane. Sad end, Southgate needs to go. I knew they weren't scoring with 10 to go as soon as he brought Mount and Sterling on.
At the 60th minute he needs to take Henderson and Foden off, who were tired/not in the game, and bring on Rashford and Grealish to kill the game when we were on top.
Instead what does he do? Waits until the 80th minute to bring on fecking Sterling who's been finished for a year and Mount who does nothing. And for Saka as well who was our best player.
He like Santos for Portugal is holding England, nice guy and a good manager and all but he's Ole for England. Sad, because this is the last world cup we'll have with a prime Kane. Sad end, Southgate needs to go. I knew they weren't scoring with 10 to go as soon as he brought Mount and Sterling on.
Awful manager, can't believe he put Sterling on before Rashford.
I don't think today is indicative of him as a manager. That was against Italy and Croatia.
France are world champions and a world class team and Harry Kane converting a second pen might have done it for England.
I think England need new ideas.
France are world champions and a world class team and Harry Kane converting a second pen might have done it for England.
I think England need new ideas.
Get rid of him.
Said it before he’s the international manager equivalent of Ole, he will get the odd result for you but he will struggle when you face a tough opponent. Saying that though he is the best manager England have had in years so the least he deserves is to see out his contract.