Most liked posts in thread: England v Italy

I think when Sako came on he showed why he shouldn't have started. You get the occasional freak who you can throw onto the biggest stage and they mentally take it in their stride but it's rare and the occasion seemed pretty obviously too big for him the minute he stepped on the pitch. If this was Euro2024 where he should have more experience then it's different but at this point, it was too big an occasion for a 19-year-old

And again with the back 5, what do people think didn't work with that? We were solid having them always playing in front of our lines with a 5 and when we played with a 4 they were breaking through our lines time and time again. 5 at the back was the right choice, Mount was where the choice was wrong as we needed pace to expose the CB's

 

The second half maybe, the first was fine. Kane was winning everything in that first half and our players were getting the knockdowns. It was the 2nd half it went to pot and that because we needed to change Mount and maybe even Sterling for with more pace to get the CB's to have to go back to what they were doing in the first half and hedging their bets and their FB's going back to having to tuck around narrow expecting quick breaks behind the CB's

 

To be fair to Shaw I just had a look through United previous penalty shoot-outs and the only game he took one in was the Villereal match. He did score it (but hey unless you were a Spanish Keeper you were guaranteed to score in that shoot-out ) but he was 8th to take it behind Mata, Telles, Bruno, Rashford, Cavani, Fred and Dan James. Only Axel, Lindelof and DDG took one later than him. If a defender doesn't want to take one early I can understand that, if they score goals it's a bonus, not something to be expected but Strikers or AM not taking them is a problem. If they have a decent amount of experience they should really be first up as its part of their job to be able to score.

While I was looking through the United shoot out records I did come across something I forgot. While on loan at Derby a certain Mason Mount too the first penalty at Old Trafford when a League Cup game went to pens and scored. So it further highlights some of the odd choices for players to take off in extra time when pens were a real option while leaving others on. There were people on the pitch who as far as I can tell haven't ever taken a senior penalty even in a shootout but others we took off who have scored multiple both in normal play and in shootouts and who usually nominate themselves in the first 5

 

I see Pickford was supposedly lined up for penalty number 6. Yes that's right, Pickford who even doing his normal job has a habit of buckling under pressure was going to be asked to take a penalty before the rest of our attacking players

 

Keepers will all tell you though in penalties there isn't a great deal of pressure on their normal side of the penalty. If a player takes a penalty well no matter how good a keeper is he won’t save it so they just aren’t expected to save it. So saving a penalty and taking a penalty is a completely different situation mentally

We have seen with Pickford for Everton that he is prone to errors in moments of stress, even against Denmark notice how poor his kicking that had been great suddenly went to pot. It's the one concern we have seen levelled at him and it’s why Everton seemingly seemed wanted to replace him last summer because while he is largely a quality keeper but mentally people don’t trust him