He's gone for a tried and trusted team then. Looks ok to be fair.
Jude Bellingham is good at football.
He's different class isn't he? Lovely to watch.
Rashford poor. Swap him. Probably for Grealish.
I don't like Trippier at LB.
No to Maguire. He's not playing regularly, is slow, and not good enough on the ball.
Phillips also needs swapping. Not good enough. I'm ambivalent who for.
Have some sympathy with Trippier at left back given injuries to Shaw and Chilwell. But the continued selection of Maguire and Phillips suggests Southgate is now more interested in making a point than doing his job properly.
That was a better goal than this game deserved.
Agreed. But the sickly love-in on the commentary - particularly from Mr Homes Under The Hammer - is making me want to poke my own eyes out
Really? It seems you’d find anything to moan about.
Kane is fucking shit, right?
Apparently. He can’t run. So not sure how he scored his second goal.
(Although he butchered that last 4 v 2 by playing the ball behind Grealish)
Kane and Bellingham are as good as any attacking players in the world right now.
Didn't see it, as I was playing. What happened? Did kane score another penalty? hurrah!
Let's see how he is in the summer, when his legs are dead. Like normal.
Yes he did. Also he scored this very non dead legged goal:
It's a lovely goal, but the defender looked like he'd dozed off.
There's a tangle at the half way line, that Kane gets away from first. A defender comes across and looks to get there first, but doesn't deal with it. The defender he tangled with stopped his tracking run, then resumed after his teammate failed to clear it out. That gave Kane enough head start to get in.
The way you were all talking I thought that he'd looked like a striker, made strikery runs, and found a way to not have dead legs in the summer.
As you were.
I've never said that Kane is shit. Just that for me a big reason that England are blunt and hesitant against better sides, is his style of play. He plays that way because he has no pace. That's before summer tournaments and getting worn out after a particularly long squawk during the club season.
That doesn't mean that he wont do some good things. He's an elite professional footballer. It's really not that complicated.
He picked the ball up off the centre halves at one point and pinged a Gerrard-style diagonal which Foden(?) reached - Dion then raved about what a great example of a centre forward he was to all young kids. Playing Hollywood balls from your own half is not being a centre forward.
England's problem is Gareth has built the team around Maguire, Kane and winning corners/penalties. Pick Maguire, you need Walker and two CDMs to cover his lack of pace and ability. Which reduces the midfield strength, so Kane drops deeper and deeper into midfield to compensate/get involved. Presumably that's what Gareth wants him to do, (or it's a Stevie G-style lack of positional discipline), but leaves us short up front when we do break at pace
There was a time Rashford broke down the wing - but we had to turn back, as there was no-one near him - Kane was still in the centre circle and ended up getting the ball and passing back to the centre backs.
With the abundance of pace and skill Southgate has at his disposal (Jude, Foden, Saka, Rashford, Sterling, plus if they get back to top form Sancho, CHO), we should be building a team to utilise that. The modern game is about speed - of movement and thought - it's where England's first two goals came from. The third was just poor defending - even Kane joked about his lack of pace post-match. Great finish though (not denying Kane is a superb finisher).
