England v Croatia - Castle Arms - Live

To be fair they faced none of the top teams and their performances were hyped up by a rabid media but sensible pundits saw through that.

At half time I was shechtin it though.

Most games they were in were meh.

Met 2 half decent teams.

Lost both times.

comment by bubblebhoy (U3429)
posted 7 hours, 22 minutes ago
Tunisia. Dross. Win
Panama. Dross. Win
Belgium. Good. Lost
Columbia Good. Draw
Croatia. Good. Lost

Tell me how the fk England have progressed?
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Your argument would be better if your stats were correct !! You can't even get the results right !

Well, Croatia was technically a draw too I suppose.

Very fine margins with England. Extremely late winner against Tunisia and a penalty shoot-out win against Colombia. If they'd lost to Colombia there'd be a decent chance that Southgate would be unemployed at the moment, knowing their usual knee-jerk reaction.

They did play well in most of their games, but struggled to create & finish chances and their defence had a habit of falling asleep at vital moments.

Worth noting that out of the 12 goals they've scored, 9 have been from set plays. Two against Panama and one against Sweden are the only ones from open play. Whilst that shows they're extremely well-organised at set pieces, creating chances from open play is obviously not their strong suit. If they met a team that could actually defend a corner (like France) they wouldn't have stood a chance.

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England have progressed.

THey aren't great, but they're better than they were and they look like they'll keep developing as a team, especially given the success they've had at youth level.

Delighted and relieved they didn't win but I suspect they'll be improved at the next Euro's and then improved again at the next WC. Whether or not they've improved enough to start beating the top teams at these tournaments only time will tell.

Ivan

Think they need better quality than Sterling up top to support Kane up top. They were wasteful with the few chances they had in the 1st half to increase their lead. Sterling runs down blind alley's, falls over looking for free kicks and penalties and can't finish.

That's the difference between winning and losing the big games. Even if they had beaten Croatia, France are up a few notches in quality and doubt they would have troubled them.

You can sleep easy knowing they will never win anything

I think Sterling is okay. He stretches the game for them and can be very effective, although I don't think he was at his best during this WC. He was certainly better than Lingard, Alli and Rashford (who I thought deserved more game time).

They've won lots of unders tournaments in the last few years so if they can transition that into the senior team then they'll have a chance, although as ever with youths their are no guarantees.

See Modric said to ITV after the game that the English media & journalists were 'disrespectful' to Croatia before the game saying they would be 'tired' and were there for the taking. Hardly surprising coming from English media.

If anything, it was England who looked tired particularly in 2nd half and extra time.

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