England-Uruguay

[mrs miggins 0]

Phillip J Fry wrote the following post at 19/06/2014 10:23 PM:

You obviously haven''t watched much U-21''s football...

I''ve already said he''s not ready and he certainally wouldn''t be my first choice but to disregard him out of hand as some are is ridiculous.

-------------------------------------------------------

I have had the misfortune of watching the youth team (pace but lacking) and his ''effective'' tactics PACE PACE PACE (much like neil adams). The thought of him anywhere near the senior team makes me shudder....but then again, so did the thought of Hodgson.

[Phillip J Fry 0]

[quote user="Branston Pickle"]How could that side possibly go for defensive solidity? We don''t have the personnel, particularly when the best English defender, like him or hate him, is not even in the squad. For all this ''we''re going for a attacking formation'' we were pretty short on the required skill/pace/ability to create and convert enough chances.[/quote]

Collective effort and a good defensive shape. Hodgson has made far worse defenders talent wise look absolutely amazing in his system. But when you abandon your focus on defensive shape and protecting that defence in favour of attacking, you''re going to struggle to remain competitive defensively. 

[Phillip J Fry 0]

[quote user="Phillip J Fry"]

Collective effort and a good defensive shape. Hodgson has made far worse defenders talent wise look absolutely amazing in his system. But when you abandon your focus on defensive shape and protecting that defence in favour of attacking, you''re going to struggle to remain competitive defensively. 

[/quote]

... when you lack the talent in those defensive positions.

[TIL 1010 4,722]

Just when I thought I could not dislike Liverpool and everything about them anymore I watch Saurez and Gerrard.  [:''(]

[Guest]

I''m not gutted we are virtually out. I said in a post on an earlier thread that I held out little hope for this tournament but believed the next Euro should be our aim.

But I am annoyed with the complete stupidity of Hodgson and certain players.

The bull that comes out of the media should have no bearing on the managers tactics and selections.

The complete buffoon commentating tonight talked of the "courageous Rooney header" that he missed from a yard out.It was a miss, plain and simple.

Then the other buffoon who played for us once said that Johnson was "brave" when he toe poked the ball through for our goal.

But the media are the paymasters I''m afraid so I guess even their banal and ridiculous comments have to be listened to.

Hodgson however, annoyed me with his selections and tactics.

Why, when we played reasonably well against Italy, did he keep the tactics but tweek the personnel.

Sterling was easy to snuff out stuck out wide, Don''t allow to him to go past on the outside and he can''t use his pace was Uruguay''s sensible tactic.

Him nullified, that left our two full backs to provide the chances of getting behind their defence.

But I don''t believe Baines or Johnson are international standard and so we were stymied again.

Gerrard has been one of the Premier leagues best players ever but has not had a brilliant international career. His best games were a decade ago and he lost the ball for the first goal and his poor header led to the second.

Why wasn''t Wilshere given a chance to run at them up the middle instead of Gerrard trying to hit easy to read balls. And the large majority of his set pieces never beat the first defender.

Sturridge is in the England team because of his scoring record this season. That was achieved in a team with a two pronged attack and the desire to attack relentlessly. But for England, he is on his own and has to wander out to either touchline looking for the ball. And no-one ran into the box in his place.

And when we equalised, they were vulnerable. But instead of going for it, Gerrard, Henderson and Lallana played tippy tappy on the half way line.

The conditions were no different from an English August so cannot be used as an excuse.

Admit it England, you cannot get the tactics right for tournaments. And until we get an astute coach, we will struggle.

[BGG&YPOS 0]

[quote user="Phillip J Fry"][quote user="Branston Pickle"]How could that side possibly go for defensive solidity? We don''t have the personnel, particularly when the best English defender, like him or hate him, is not even in the squad. For all this ''we''re going for a attacking formation'' we were pretty short on the required skill/pace/ability to create and convert enough chances.[/quote]

Collective effort and a good defensive shape. Hodgson has made far worse defenders talent wise look absolutely amazing in his system. But when you abandon your focus on defensive shape and protecting that defence in favour of attacking, you''re going to struggle to remain competitive defensively. 

[/quote]

So are you saying that England should play like we did last year under CH?

[Phillip J Fry 0]

BGG&YPOS: that England should play like we did last year under CH?

Hodgson can make such a system work. Hughton couldn''t.

[nutty nigel 7,513]

Hodgson is one of the worlds top coaches. I wouldn''t feel qualified to know where he went wrong. I honestly believe what we''ve seen this week a as good as we are. I posted on here weeks ago that I couldn''t see us beating Italy or Uruguay. And trying to compare us with Chile by saying thats what can be achieved with teamwork does chile a massive disservice because they are also better than us as we already saw a few months ago.

[im spartacus canary 0]

bloody hell the way chile and columbia control and zip the ball around is on a different planet to us [:D]

[Branston Pickle 3,638]

I don''t have much against building on a strong and organised defence, particularly when playing decent sides (and both Uruguay and Italy are seeded above us), but that side/squad sadly doesn''t look up to it. The sad thing is that we seemed to fall between two stools, and ended up being neither good enough in defence nor effective enough in attack

[Phillip J Fry 0]

[quote user="Branston Pickle"]I don''t have much against building on a strong and organised defence, particularly when playing decent sides (and both Uruguay and Italy are seeded above us), but that side/squad sadly doesn''t look up to it. The sad thing is that we seemed to fall between two stools, and ended up being neither good enough in defence nor effective enough in attack[/quote]

Because Hodgson, for some insane reason, changed his focus from defensive shape. England should do what Switzerland have done: 4-2-3-1, a very good defensive shape and playing your most talented attackers in a direct, counter-attacking, style. 

[GJP 79]

I think the defence always looked a bit dodgy going into the tournament but there was a bit of "hope" that we had some exciting attacking talent to give us a chance - and that seemed to be the case against Italy. Unfortunately in the first half tonight it seemed a bit like the occasion got to us.

 

Godin should obviously have been sent off. Totally bottled by the ref and the other officials. But what annoyed me about that was that England didn''t make a big thing out of it. Had it been the other way around Uruguay would have been pressuring the ref into sending him off. And that was a theme throughout the match, we were too "nice". Whenever our attacking players got the ball the Uruguayans were looking to clatter in to us yet we let them have it all too easy. Same as when Norwich play Liverpool, no matter how many times Suarez makes fools of us nobody sticks to him, hits him hard and really makes him fight for it. Norwich and England both stand off Suarez.

 

However, I take no satisfaction in seeing England lose and struggle. For me it''s like Norwich - through thick and thin.

 

One more thing though - why didn''t Hart try to save the winning goal?

 

 

[YankeeCanary 0]

 

I am not surprised that we are where we are. However, we are not out yet. There is still a reasonable chance that we could squeeze through and, if we do, we won''t be the first team to perform well in later games after early disappointment. We played reasonably well against Italy but today we were found wanting.

 

At the risk of appearing to single out one player ( which I admit is unfair ) I cannot help but comment on what I observed from Glen Johnson. In the first half alone I counted 12 times when he directly gave the ball away to the opposition ( including throw-ins ) when not being pressured. I actually stopped counting. I know he was responsible for getting the ball across to Rooney for our goal but, honestly based upon what I saw, I wouldn''t recruit him for Norwich in the Championship. If Russell Martin made that many errors for us in such a short time span many would lambast him.

[Guest]

Blame the players the manager the ref or whoever it''s not going to change the fact that the current England team are as good as we have right now and are just not good enough to compete with the worlds best teams. The English game is overloaded with foreign talent and that is having a knock on effect with the players coming through the youth ranks hence the cat 1 academies idea.

[GJP 79]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"]

If Russell Martin made that many errors for us in such a short time span many would lambast him.

[/quote]

Would they?

 

I''d say Martin got less criticism than he should last season. While the likes of Bassong and RVW got plenty of stick Martin got away with a number of performances that were below par. His popularity, at least partly grown out of him having a great attitude, cuts him a lot of slack - in my opinion.

[First Wazzock 902]

Spot on InchY

[First Wazzock 902]

Has there been any suspicious betting in the far East that Gerrard would set up both of their goals?

[YankeeCanary 0]

[quote user="GJP"][quote user="YankeeCanary"]

If Russell Martin made that many errors for us in such a short time span many would lambast him.

[/quote]

Would they?

 

I''d say Martin got less criticism than he should last season. While the likes of Bassong and RVW got plenty of stick Martin got away with a number of performances that were below par. His popularity, at least partly grown out of him having a great attitude, cuts him a lot of slack - in my opinion.

[/quote]

 

Yes they would GJP. You focused on the Martin part of my message while ignoring the context. I was really using Martin to make a point. I like Martin from an attitude perspective but right back was certainly a weakness for us last season. The point I was really making, however, is that Johnson is playing for England and, atrociously, giving the ball away countless numbers of times without being under pressure when it happened.

[Mello Yello 2,282]

I think Mr Blatter will be somewhat pleased with our result last night.......

[Reggie Strayshun 0]

[quote user="nutty nigel"]Hodgson is one of the worlds top coaches. I wouldn''t feel qualified to know where he went wrong. I honestly believe what we''ve seen this week a as good as we are. I posted on here weeks ago that I couldn''t see us beating Italy or Uruguay. And trying to compare us with Chile by saying thats what can be achieved with teamwork does chile a massive disservice because they are also better than us as we already saw a few months ago.[/quote]Not often I agree with Nige, but, on this occasion I do. Not sure whether you could describe RH as ''one of the world''s top coaches'' though. A bit OTT.The fact is he picked the players and formation that were the best available to him. The bottom line is that we are simply not good enough to deal with the world''s best at competition level. End of. Suarez and Cavani are in a different class to anything we have.Like others, I''ve seen the parallel with Norwich in that there is a potentially excellent crop of young talent coming through. In the same way that Norwich''s crop was not ready for the PL last season, England''s was not ready for the WC. But in both cases NOW is the time to start blooding them.

[Guest]

Apologies Nutty for not reading your post and then posting a similar thing. :-)

[Tumbleweed 106]

I''m surprised some have said we were too attacking and should go back a "Roy team" of solid defensiveness. I thought that is exactly what he did. We looked like we were playing 6-3-1 with Gerrard and Henderson so deep they were practically sitting on Cahill and Jagielka. I noticed only one Gerrard surge and when Henderson did get forward on the odd occasion we looked more dangerous as we had another option. But it didn''t happen enough, Rooney cannot occupy that entire midfield central space on his and link such a deep defensive midfield unit with the attack. It was exactly the same as City last two years with Fer and Johnson sitting too deep. No wonder poor old Sturridge was feeding on scraps and the (in my view) wrongly-maligned Welbeck was left with nowehere to go . But despite that we created some chances and like the Italy game we could have won rather than lost. So we are not that far away. I think the major problem is Hodgson not getting the best out of what we have, his inability to change things and insistence on playing people like Gerrard who is now too slow in a too deep position, Rooney marginalised against Italy, not taking one of the world''s best left backs, our players not closing down either Italy or Uruguay with as much speed as they did to us, the wrong in-game attitude and so on.

[lharman7 39]

From another thread.

Re: Suarez

Reply Quote

Jimmy Smith wrote:

Gary Cahill will keep him in check. We''ve got enough about us to cause more problems for them.

Not a chance. I wouldn''t be surprised if Suarez cause''s havok in our defence. He knows all too well how our center halves play.

Pains me to tell you so but i told you so!

[# 0]

I didn''t watch the game but I''m surprised that anyone is surprised about the result. [:S]

[Phillip J Fry 0]

At least I can now watch the rest of the world cup in peace as a neutral and not have to worry about England and how they''ll f**k it up.

[:)]

[YellowNets1901 0]

Anyone listened to Chris Waddle''s comments? He''s spot on.

[GJP 79]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"][quote user="GJP"][quote user="YankeeCanary"]

If Russell Martin made that many errors for us in such a short time span many would lambast him.

[/quote]

Would they?

 

I''d say Martin got less criticism than he should last season. While the likes of Bassong and RVW got plenty of stick Martin got away with a number of performances that were below par. His popularity, at least partly grown out of him having a great attitude, cuts him a lot of slack - in my opinion.

[/quote]

 

Yes they would GJP. You focused on the Martin part of my message while ignoring the context. I was really using Martin to make a point. I like Martin from an attitude perspective but right back was certainly a weakness for us last season. The point I was really making, however, is that Johnson is playing for England and, atrociously, giving the ball away countless numbers of times without being under pressure when it happened.

[/quote]

I didn''t ignore the context. I thought it was a poor example/comparison because Martin has escaped criticism that a less popular player might have attracted.

 

As for Glen Johnson, I think everyone knows the situation. England appear very short of options in that area. Kyle Walker appears the only real threat to Johnson''s place (when he''s fit) and he''s even worse than Johnson defensively and isn''t a particularly good player on the ball either. The same things/criticisms about Johnson have been said many times but there''s no obvious candidate to replace him at this point.

[4th floor 4]

[quote user="InchY"]The English game is overloaded with foreign talent and that is having a knock on effect with the players coming through the youth ranks hence the cat 1 academies idea.[/quote]Although that''s an obvious issue, it''s been said before by people like Glenn Hoddle that the youth systems in this country still leave a lot to be desired. I remember the discussions about why we don''t produce enough quality players after England failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and fairly recently Hoddle said that we''re still not up to standard in this respect. Countries like [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27827569]Belgium[/url] seem to be on the right track in taking measures to better coordinate the development of their youngsters, and have seen a positive effect within a relatively short period.

[swjf50 0]

Our tactics were not good enough, our attacks were far too methodical and slow, that it allowed Uruguay time to organise themselves. We were too predictable as usual and didn''t make the most of Stirling''s pace.

We should have known what to expect from Suarez, as we gifted him both goals. Yes he was in the right place to score but no defender was close enough to him. It was less about Suarez brilliance and more about our poor defending. Two mistakes from Gerrard led to both goals and the positioning of our defenders was like watching a school team.

In summary I''d say we are not good enough to compete with the world''s best but we could and should have made it much harder for them, as Uruguay are not that good apart from their strikers.

[splutcho 173]

We got done on the counter twice from two bits of poor Gerrard play. They had two shots on target and scored both. That''s football, sh*t happens.