England

He just did change it!

how, by moving trippier to left wing back instead of left back

we basically played the exact same way, Trippier was already pushing up whilst walker stayed back as a 3rd CB.

comment by Christopher (U20930)
posted 6 minutes ago
I've never cared about the style of play under Southgate - happy to put up with a month of bad football if it means we win.

the difference this time is that it's not even been boring but effective, we're so fortunate to have gotten this far. the left hand side has been a disaster from minute one and his refusal to change it is completely comical.
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It's funny, the Southgate apologists have started coming out of the woodwork again since we made another semi-final, saying he's done well to get us far, how you can only beat who is put in front of you etc. But the moment you ask them if they'd take Southgate at their club we know what the answer would be.

England are reminding me of AVB Spurs at the moment, playing drab, boring football with little chances created while relying on moments of brilliance from Bale to scrape through.

comment by Christopher (U20930)
posted 25 minutes ago
how, by moving trippier to left wing back instead of left back

we basically played the exact same way, Trippier was already pushing up whilst walker stayed back as a 3rd CB.
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We shifted to a back three. Trippier was limited (and if we can bring in Shaw for a whole 90 it will make a big difference) but in this formation we were able to find Saka in space way more often. It's too timid for my liking and still not great but it was objectively a different shape with some players in different roles, and was our best performance of the tournament (a low bar to clear) against the best team we've played so far.

I really don't think it made a difference at all in possession - Saka was already managing to get past his fullback in the earlier games. We still created basically nothing at the end of the day.

it helped out of possession though which helped us have more control of the game - matching their shape made it easier to press them, they didn't have a spare man a long their back line line Denmark and Serbia did

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 4 hours, 19 minutes ago
Looking back over the Euros and WCs of my lifetime, probably more than half were won by a team that was playing cautious, defensive football, and usually by a team that didn't look like it was the best at the tournament. Didn't I read that Southgate and his staff when he was appointed commission a study of how winners of these tournaments had got it done, and set about building a strategy based on that template?

I thought England were marginally the better team against Switzerland yesterday and that was our best performance of the competition. Not a very convincing performance but long spells of dominance, moving the ball forward quicker with more courage to hit early passes through narrow gaps. And let's not forget that Switzerland were one of the teams that had impressed most over the group stage and round of 16.
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Never knew about the commission, would explain his staunch approach every game, when considering subs, particularly.

True, Swirzerland could’ve been the dark horses this year, they were playing well enough, so maybe ‘playing sh*’ for us was harsh - for that game.

We’ve had some great tussles in the past with the Dutch so hopefully Wednesday will be the same.

Shinjury, I think generally critiques of Southgate are fair, particularly around lack of reactivity (let alone proactivity!) with substitutions, and while I understand the safety-first mantra, England have made life harder for themselves by being over cautious and ponderous in build-up. My intention was to qualify those criticisms rather than contradict them.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 5 hours, 10 minutes ago
Looking back over the Euros and WCs of my lifetime, probably more than half were won by a team that was playing cautious, defensive football, and usually by a team that didn't look like it was the best at the tournament. Didn't I read that Southgate and his staff when he was appointed commission a study of how winners of these tournaments had got it done, and set about building a strategy based on that template?

I thought England were marginally the better team against Switzerland yesterday and that was our best performance of the competition. Not a very convincing performance but long spells of dominance, moving the ball forward quicker with more courage to hit early passes through narrow gaps. And let's not forget that Switzerland were one of the teams that had impressed most over the group stage and round of 16.
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not shore agree with this. imo mosed wc n euros I seen were wun bye wurthy winners

i think only Greece in 2004 fit that theory as a nonfancied team winnin bye deefendin

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 hour, 46 minutes ago
Shinjury, I think generally critiques of Southgate are fair, particularly around lack of reactivity (let alone proactivity!) with substitutions, and while I understand the safety-first mantra, England have made life harder for themselves by being over cautious and ponderous in build-up. My intention was to qualify those criticisms rather than contradict them.
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It's hard to be too harsh when we have hit the heady heights of the semis; ideally we could've made it easier on the eye/life expectancy.

Although I found it very easy during and after every game so far, barring the last.