England matches discussion.

Well England shot themselves in the foot. TBVF Argentina became the best team. We surrendered the initiative and having six defenders was inviting them to come forward. They are Errrrr known to score goals.

 

I've been saying what a fecking useless piece of shit Tuchel is all along and today just confirmed it. I don't have a problem with going defensive but its the subs that had absolutely no tactical thought put into them. It's something you expect from a 5 year old not supposedly a world class manager.

Harry Kane is a waste of space when playing like this, he gets too deep, is too slow so can't get up if we do break and on the occasions he does stay up he never really wins the ball. We needed an outlet. Of the players we had on the field when subs started Gordon is the most likely to offer that but he was taken off.

You also need FB's to get out. James and Spence weren't doing that good enough. (After a great first half Spence was awful in the second, he kept switching off). And then when James got injured we bring on another FB but play him in midfield and have a CB in the FB position where they are even less naturally inclined to close down giving easy crossing opportunities.

And then there was bringing on all the CB's and taking off midfielders. Rather than having too lines of defence we ended up with one and a massive hole to be exploited. If we still had Rice on or if Rice had to come off say Mainoo we would have had a second line that could have mopped up some of the balls and certainly got out quicker and more ability to transition into a counter

Having so many CB's on actually pushed us so deep they couldn't even do their job either. Argentina are a small side but our CB's were so deep that these fairly small players could get a decent run on them while they were jumping from a standing position so they were winning headers they shouldn't have.

Oh and I assumed I had miscounted and we had used all our subs. Why did he only bring Toney and Rashford on when we conceded the second when we needed to relieve some pressure with an outball?

Tuchel screwed the squad up from the off , misused the squad he did take and then spent the tournament getting lucky and dragged out of trouble by key players all while apart from the first game his subs didn't actually work (people raved about Mexico but his subs had the same issues as today, it invited too much pressure, gave us no outlet and we got lucky)

 

Ok the Argies should be kicked out of the tournament. They got away when they were caught singing Falklands songs and now they have been going around with a banner about it. But ofc FIFA won't because they want to gift Herr Messi another World Cup

 

He wasn't getting out before the knock though. He was dreadful in the second half, constantly switching off or on his heels. The second time he switched off early in the second half he should have been hooked for O'Reilly who we saw when he came on although in Midfield he had the pace and energy that we needed out there that Spence didn't have to try and stop crosses before the game in or atleast make them more difficult