Saka 19, Sancho 21, Rashford 23. . . Why were these England’s 3rd, 4th & 5th Penalty Taker?

[Ixion]

No, the best takers have to go first, second and third. The fourth and fifth penalty might not even matter. Taking the fifth is just attention hugging and wanting to be the hero.

Legend has it John Terry rearranged the order in 2008 against United so he would go 5th for that exact reason.

 

[shoom]

Hes not wrong tbh

No, he's not.

It doesn't matter who's done what in training, you need your senior players who have some experience of how to handle those high pressure moments to step up. Henderson, Sterling, Shaw, Walker, etc. should all have been ahead of Saka.

 

[FatTails]

Hes not wrong tbh

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Jose vs Luke Shaw has now officially surpassed Souness vs Pogba.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

Grealish has come out and said that he asked to take one but Southgate chose the takers and turned him down.

Likely because his record in training wasnt that good I suspect.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

Being on the pitch longer might have led to a goal without even going to penalties. Why in god's name did he want it to go to penalties.

That is a separate matter entirely

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

No, the best takers have to go first, second and third. The fourth and fifth penalty might not even matter. Taking the fifth is just attention hugging and wanting to be the hero.

That is the precise mentality that causes teams like England to lose so many shoot outs. The unwarranted assumption that the opposition will miss their penalties and quickly.

 

[Jev]

That is the precise mentality that causes teams like England to lose so many shoot outs. The unwarranted assumption that the opposition will miss their penalties and quickly.

Rationally the fifth penalty taker shouldn't be your best penalty taker but your third or fourth best, a seasoned player who can handle the nerves. That's not arrogance, that's simple math. In every shootout there's a realistic chance the fifth kick never occurs, whether it's because you win or lose. You don't want to save for safest bet for a kick that may not come.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

What are you on about? We are talking about logic here. Sometimes players miss yes. But you want said players to be put in as good mental states as possible. If someone misses whilst having the best circumstances fair enough. But coming on completely cold is a far more pressured situation it's just logic.

You keep refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room. When you come off the bench for penalties. Mentally you are the freshest on pitch. I find it hilarious most people would happily sub on late a keeper believed to be a penalty saving expert. Yet in the same vein an outfield player is miraculously exempt from being able to do the same.

 

[Zen]

Hes not wrong tbh

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Tottenham Hotspur 1-1 Norwich City (2-3 pens): Tim Krul the hero as Canaries beat Spurs - BBC Sport

What did he say to Aurier, Vertonghen, Ndombele after he allowed his kids to miss 2 straight? Parrot(18), Fernandes(21)....

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

Rationally the fifth penalty taker shouldn't be your best penalty taker but your second or third-best, a seasoned player who can handle the nerves. That's not arrogance, that's simple maths. In every shootout there's a realistic chance the fifth kick never occurs, whether it's because you win or lose. You don't want to save for safest bet for a kick that may not come.

Its called a penalty for reason. It's less likely that penalties will be missed willy nilly. Losing your best takers early immediately places you at a disadvantage as long as expected, the opposition scores from 12 yards the less pressure penalties. Its that simple.


That is why all the pundits and journos claiming CR7 "just wanted glory' by being the 5th taker were laughably off base. Its never the 5th taker's fault the earlier ones cant do their job. No one has ANY business missing the low pressure penalties.



But it will definitely be your fault as a team and and ace takers if you go first, second and third and then your last 2 takers can't handle pressure penalties because they are already weak takers.

 

[Jev]

Its called a penalty for reason. It's less likely that penalties will be missed willy nilly. Losing your best takers early immediately places you at a disadvantage as long as expected, the opposition scores from 12 yards the less pressure penalties. Its that simple.


That is why all the pundits and journos claiming CR7 "just wanted glory' by being the 5th taker were laughably off base. Its never the 5th taker's fault the earlier ones cant do their job. No one has ANY business missing the low pressure penalties.



But it will definitely be your fault as a team and and ace takers if you go first, second and third and then your last 2 takers can't handle pressure penalties because they are already weak takers.

No, it really is this simple: You're 100 percent certain the first two kicks will happen. You're only 90 percent certain the final kick will happen. Therefore you want your safest penalty taker to take his before then, due to the risk of him not kicking at all. They count equally whether it's the first or the fifth.

 

[mancan92]

You keep refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room. When you come off the bench for penalties. Mentally you are the freshest on pitch. I find it hilarious most people would happily sub on late a keeper believed to be a penalty saving expert. Yet in the same vein an outfield player is miraculously exempt from being able to do the same.

No your not the freshest. You have low confidence because you haven't played much the whole tournament, you are being rushed onto the field in the last moment of one of the biggest matches of your career and you get 1 sec on the pitch not even touching the ball or getting a feel for everything. You literally know that you have no redemption it's all on one moment that if you get slightly wrong will be a red mark on your whole career. That's horrendous pressure

 

[VorZakone]

No, it really is this simple: You're 100 percent certain the first two kicks will happen. You're only 90 percent certain the final kick will happen. Therefore you want your safest penalty taker to take his before then, due to the risk of him not kicking at all. They count equally whether it's the first or the fifth.

Yeah I fail to see the counter-arguments here.

 

[SATA]

Still annoyed that Rashford missed his but things like these happened. Had he converted, it would be 3-1 to England and probably game over as that would be too much to climb for Italy

 

[Redlyn]

I think the one I disagree with is saka. Rest was fair. Rashford and sancho are top attackers with a lot of experience for their ages. We should be able to expect them to handle it. Saka is the most inexperienced kid. No way he should be 1st or 5th.

 

[Alex99]

No, it really is this simple: You're 100 percent certain the first two kicks will happen. You're only 90 percent certain the final kick will happen. Therefore you want your safest penalty taker to take his before then, due to the risk of him not kicking at all. They count equally whether it's the first or the fifth.

I think ideally your five nominated takers would contain three that you'd consider "safe" takers, and you'd position them at 1, 3 and 5 in the order, with your "safest" taker going first, and probably your second safest going fifth.

Unfortunately it looked like England's five only contained two such players (Kane and Rashford), and one of them missed. That said, Saka fifth was never going to be a good choice.

I don't ever see the value in leaving your best penalty taker until 5th, because as you've said, you might not get that far into the shootout, but you still want a pretty safe bet there because it's only ever either a kick to win the game, or a kick to keep you in the game.

 

[Redlyn]

No, the best takers have to go first, second and third. The fourth and fifth penalty might not even matter. Taking the fifth is just attention hugging and wanting to be the hero.

But the counter is that 5th is often decisive with more pressure than all the others. You need to be able to bear the weight of the whole match on your shoulders alone. 5th needs a strong taker. 5th is more important than 3rd imo. In order of best takers I would say 1,2,5,3,4 ( with 2 and 5 debateable)

 

[saivet]

But 5th is often decisive. You need to be able to bear the weight of having the whole match on your shoulders. 5th needs a strong taker. 5th is more important than 3rd imo.

Even if you think that should be the case England don't have many strong penalty takers, so no matter how we lost it (unless it went deep into sudden death) there would be complaints.

 

[TMDaines]

Edit: Further edits as I missed the Nations League third place shootout!

All from Transfermarkt. I must confess and didn't realise until someone told me that TM's player data pages are weirdly missing a lot of high profile penalty shootouts, but they do include a random few. The exact numbers are therefore a little out. I strongly believe my main argument still stands though, which was that the cupboard was pretty bare after Kane and Rashford. I did quite a bit more manual research this morning and don't think anyone else has scored more than four penalties, in game or shootouts, for clubs at senior level, apart from Kane and Rashford. Sancho had scored 3/3 for Dortmund and one in the Nations League.

Maguire scored a couple for Leicester in shootouts and one in the Nations League, which made him a more obvious taker when you look further. But other than that? Grealish has scored one in a shootout for Villa but has only ever missed one during a game. Walker has scored one for Spurs in a shootout but right down at number nine or ten. Tripper has scored one for England but was unavailable, otherwise he would have likely taken one. Mount has another goal and another miss in shootouts for Chelsea. Sterling actually has scored in a shootout for City and England, but is 2-3 in matches. Phillips has scored one for Leeds. Shaw's penalty against Villareal was converted, but pretty crap way down the pecking order.

That still leaves you with Kane and Rashford as certainties. Maguire and Sancho the other players with at a couple of penalties taken and a 100% record at senior level. If Saka was performing well in training and you have faith in him, I can understand why. There's really not a good obvious candidate looking at all the data available.

The same manager's processes and approaches worked against Colombia and Switzerland. We shouldn't be too results-oriented after losing a single shootout.

Made an edit here, as I forgot about the Nations League and now do think Sterling would have been one of my first five. Despite his indifferent record, he's scored in a shootout for England before, so unless he was giving me real doubts in training, I’d probably lean to his experience.

 

[Revan]

But the counter is that 5th is often decisive with more pressure than all the others. You need to be able to bear the weight of the whole match on your shoulders alone. 5th needs a strong taker. 5th is more important than 3rd imo. In order of best takers I would say 1,2,5,3,4 ( with 2 and 5 debateable)

The problem with keeping your most reliable penalty taker as fifth, often means that he doesn't shoot the penalty at all cause the shootout is already over. For example, Ronaldo didn't even take a penalty in Portugal's loss to Spain in semis of 2012 precisely for this reason.

I think you need players who can keep their nerves (usually this means experienced players) at fourth and fifth, but your best shooters should be early so they give you the advantage. The earlier you put pressure in the other team, the higher you'll win (already discussed at length that statistically, the team that shoots first wins in more than 60% of matches).

 

[Redlyn]

Even if you think that should be the case England don't have many strong penalty takers, so no matter how we lost it (unless it went deep into sudden death) there would be complaints.

Yes there would be complaints on losing for sure , but saka going 5th for me is justifiable complaint.

Anyway this is also just about the academics of penalty taking in general.

 

[Zen]

Unless you're basically Alan Shearer..... I'm a nervous wreck whoever steps up, Kane's a tad lower than Big Al but I'm now a tiny bit wary to him too. I mean when you've seen Gerrard and Lampard miss in the same bloody shootout, it's just not your thing. The Colombia win will always be special though!

Firm believe that your main man goes first too, I'm pretty certain more often than not.... it works. I mean, I think I've witnessed Schweinsteiger playing his luck twice going fifth and missing both times - winning one of those two, Ronaldo's done it twice and didn't get to take it once.... so you're big taker going 5h is 50% from those two alone.

 

[Redlyn]

The problem with keeping your most reliable penalty taker as fifth, often means that he doesn't shoot the penalty at all cause the shootout is already over. For example, Ronaldo didn't even take a penalty in Portugal's loss to Spain in semis of 2012 precisely for this reason.

I think you need players who can keep their nerves (usually this means experienced players) at fourth and fifth, but your best shooters should be early so they give you the advantage. The earlier you put pressure in the other team, the higher you'll win (already discussed at length that statistically, the team that shoots first wins in more than 60% of matches).

I agree the most reliable shouldn't be last. They should be first. My post said as much. However you need to keep a strong taker for 5th. Not a 19 year old kid.

 

[Revan]

I agree the most reliable shouldn't be last. They should be first. My post said as much. However you need to keep a strong taker for 5th. Not a 19 year old kid.

Absolutely.

 

[Canuckred64]

It seems to me having the three youngest players taking the last three penalties was a mistake, I think you need an old hand taking the fifth penalty.

So do we know if Southgate picked the players to take the penalties and the order they would take them ? And where there any players who refused to take a penalty?

 

[Acheron]

Saka-Sancho-Maguire-Rashford-Kane - would be a much better order to shoot in.

If England was shooting first maybe, but when you're second then there's always more pressure no matter the order. Think it's something similar to relay races, where you want to both start strong and finish strong. Then the players more susceptible to not handle pressure should be in the middle. Think I would had Kane open up the shoot out and leave for the last one someone like Maguire or at least an experienced player who can handle pressure, sometimes it isn't so much about having good technique but handling the pressure and prior to that Saka hadn't been in a remotely comparable situation.

 

[Acrobat7]

But the counter is that 5th is often decisive with more pressure than all the others. You need to be able to bear the weight of the whole match on your shoulders alone. 5th needs a strong taker. 5th is more important than 3rd imo. In order of best takers I would say 1,2,5,3,4 ( with 2 and 5 debateable)

Yes, i actually agree with you taking everything into account. 1, 2, 5, 3, 4 should be the order.

 

[Superden]

If saka is old enough and good enough to start a final hes old enough to take a pen. Assuming he was good enough at pens, which is why he was chosen.

 

[TheReligion]

If saka is old enough and good enough to start a final hes old enough to take a pen. Assuming he was good enough at pens, which is why he was chosen.

He didn't start a final.

 

[BluesJr]

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[arnie_ni]

He didn't start a final.

Arguable he should even have seen the field.

Think it was a poor sub but Southgate loves him

 

[TheReligion]

Arguable he should even have seen the field.

Think it was a poor sub but Southgate loves him

He was the safer attacking option. He should have brought on Sancho.

 

[Zen]

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Solid sources on that clickbait I'm hoping..... I'm guessing, none.

 

[arnie_ni]

He was the safer attacking option. He should have brought on Sancho.

I think it was rashford that was needed. Pace in behind, get them turned

 

[BluesJr]

Solid sources on that clickbait I'm hoping..... I'm guessing, none.

It was clearly shocking decision making.

 

[Zen]

It was clearly shocking decision making.

Regardless of what you think. Did they quote and/or name any player to back up that headline?

 

[criticalanalysis]

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'A penalty was all I'd been asked to contribute for the team'.

The language used in Grealish and Rashford's tweets seem to me they both weren't happy or comfortable with their roles for England.

Obviously you can construe anything from a few words but let's be honest, everyone and their dog has been baffled by Southgate's plan b all tournie. Or rather the lack of it.

 

[BluesJr]

Regardless of what you think. Did they quote and/or name any player to back up that headline?

Both fairly reputable journos and these stories never ever have named sources. Doesn’t make them untrue.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

The problem with keeping your most reliable penalty taker as fifth, often means that he doesn't shoot the penalty at all cause the shootout is already over. For example, Ronaldo didn't even take a penalty in Portugal's loss to Spain in semis of 2012 precisely for this reason.
.....

That is the least likely scenario. Its amazing people still think the first 3 penalties are the most likely to be missed. They are not. Use all your best takers in them and your are favorites to lose the shoot out every time

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

No, it really is this simple: You're 100 percent certain the first two kicks will happen. You're only 90 percent certain the final kick will happen. Therefore you want your safest penalty taker to take his before then, due to the risk of him not kicking at all. They count equally whether it's the first or the fifth.

You DON'T get it. Them counting equally has NOTHING to do with the amount of pressure one each penalty. The pressure in a shoot out increases per penalty and 4 and 5 are this the most difficult due to the pressure. Only the strongest takers and your mentally toughest should be on that duty for those 2 kicks. Its only in sudden death when all things are equal, and the pressure is the same and no one has a choice as to who takes what

I believe you are simply not serious if you imagine your opponents are going to miss ANY of the first 3 in a shoot out from 12 yards. For you are wrongly assuming your Keeper will save one of the first 3. If it happens it was just your luck.

Using your best takers there is likely to make you lose 9/10 times. I'm willing to bet England's penalty shoot out woes have often come down to that one factor. Their best takers are always lost early.