What's the point of having better in game management, when you get the squad and team into the tournament in terrible shape?
A point of potential point of failure I mentioned when everyone was to keen to get rid of southgate.
12 Jun 2026
1.0K
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Semi-final world cup is not too shabby but the truth is we got there without playing anybody that good, and when we that changed we just weren't good enough.
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Oh hello.
So world class harry Kane, discuss. We set the squad up to play to his strengths. Good against Moldova's. At least in goal contributions. What's your coaching assessment over the last few games against actual teams. Bring your stats, your touch map, your eye test of impactfull moments. I want your assessment of world class, analysed over that period.
Or was it just exactly what I told you it would be?
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I have never met anyone as much "I told you so"
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That's a massive missed opportunity. With too many good players on holiday, and too many crocks creaking through games.
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Well, maybe if the blinding fucking obvious got so little traction in advance, it wouldn't be necessary to draw your attention back to it.
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As someone said before, it all got a bit Megson
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That's superior in game management for you. With the benefit of hindsight, what do you think we gained with German knowhow?
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Better tanks?
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I briefly considered trying to wrestle this particular crown off (of) Tricky with the whole Tuchel / Bayern / etc.. stick, but then I realised that I didn't really want it and despite early narrow victories my campaign would ultimately fall short...
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I'm not digging individuals out, but I'm absolutely fuming at the stupidity and missed opportunity.
This tournament has been shit. Being half a team might have got us over the line, or at least close. We looked exactly what we are. A set of vanity selections. Worse than the sum of our parts, and our available parts.
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The fact is we would have been out in the second round without Harry Kane. He's hardly had a bad world cup.
Football is hard. It sometimes looks hard.
But arguing that a guy who plays for the number 1 ranked club team in Europe, who has scored 64 goals this season, 85 in 121 England caps, and who will probably win the Ballon d'or this year, unless Messi wins the World Cup for Argentina, is not sustainable.
We have never had a goalscoring centre forward as technically good as him and if we want to get just that little bit further it's not going to be with Toney or Watkins or Foden up front.
Put it another way, do you seriously think if he was Spanish or Argentinian he wouldn't be starting for those teams?
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You didn't enjoy 5 minutes of Pickford punting the ball in the general direction of Dan Burn?
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You've not read the spec. Give me your coaching opinion of the performance over the period in question.
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Totally. Flat-track bully who, yet again, goes missing and offers nothing against the better defences. Still living off a (very good) brace against the top-tier defence of, er, DR Congo. One penalty in the last three games for a supposed world-class striker.
Bellingham single-handedly dragged England through R16 and the QF. Also anonymous tonight.
Where were the brilliant midfielders we have to unlock defences (back home watching on TV), or strikers who can actually make runs and offer options (still on the bench)?
No Micah, Kane is not cleverly drawing the defenders out, he's too slow to actually get into the box and get on the end of the crosses.
Southgate and, even more so, Tuchel have built their teams around Kane. And fallen short every time when they've come up against the better teams. -
Looking at the Norway and Argentina games together, I think Kane showed two different kinds of performance. Against Norway he was quietly world class, even without filling the highlights. He kept dropping in, linked everything together, occupied defenders and created space for the runners around him. England's attack functioned because of the work he was doing, even if it wasn't the flashy stuff.
Tonight, I thought he was good rather than world class. He did plenty of good work early on and was involved in England's best attacking spells, but once England dropped deeper he became isolated and couldn't really influence the game in the same way. That's not all on him, but the very best performances tend to come with a defining moment when the game is in the balance, and that never really came. Over the two games, I'd say one world-class performance and one very good one.
His strength is football IQ and technique rather than intelligence or pace and that requires looking closely at the game and understanding it to assess impact rather drawing a colourful heat map. Any number of forwards can run, but very very few can influence games, grasp moments or finish as well as him.
But you're setting me up to defend him after two games which aren't his best, which is palpably unfair. If you want to understand how good he is and why what he does is harder than running and pressing ask why Nicolas Jackson, who can run and press all day long, was so much less effective in the same squad as him. Look at his stats across the year. Watch what he does next year.
