England are doomed with ‘neanderthal pub footballers’ and Harry Kane

Editor F365 15 Jul 2024 12:52 PM

Declan Rice and Jordan Pickford

England losing to Spain has prompted so many opinions. They keep on coming. Declan Rice and Harry Kane are in the firing line.

Send your views to theeditor@football365.com

England inquest
Positives:
1. Cole Palmer played 150 minutes. Looked good for 120 but made no real impact. Then in his final 30 minutes at the business end of the euros he scored an ice cold penalty v Switzerland, made an ice cold last minute winning assist v Holland and equalised v Spain. He is England’s #10.

2. Southgate extended his incredible record as England manager. Managed the multiple players who weren’t match fit pre tournament exceptionally well and guided the team to peak for the semi and final. Expertly integrated Mainoo, Guehi, Konsa and Palmer, made game changing substitutions and showed his eye for a player is 2nd to none by bringing Wharton, Guehi, Konsa, Toney and Watkins and using 4 of them exceptionally well.

3. Phil Foden fannying around for 626 minutes without a goal or an assist tells us that either Phil Foden is crap (he isn’t) or that he should be playing as much as possible in the opposition penalty area not taking pot shots from distance (with that crazy xG he has). He should be England’s #9. The Stockport Romario.

4. Getting better at penalties.

5.Our first ever final overseas. 3rd final in our history.

Negatives:
1. We still can’t keep and use the ball well enough against elite teams. Our movement is too slow and predictable at elite level. Our players still don’t read the game well enough or have enough in-game intelligence. Our patterns of play are still pretty neanderthal.

2. Declan Rice isn’t good enough on the ball to play elite level football. Mainoo’s stats suggest he may look better at football than he currently is. However this may not be the case for Adam Wharton and Rico Lewis (if we play him in midfield) who may both turn into amazing midfielders for England as might Mainoo.

3. Ollie Watkins scoring a world class goal v Holland doesn’t make him an elite striker. He will never be that. We need a world class #9.

4. Jude Bellingham is not (yet) the English Modric, Cruyff, Xavi, Iniesta, Hagi, Pirlo, Platini, Zidane, Gascoigne, Matteus or Kaka. (I’m crying while I write this and hoping maybe Cole Palmer is).

5. We still haven’t knocked a top side out of a tournament since 1966. (Spain in 96 were pre tiki taka and worse than England).

6. The number of people who think Southgate is part of the problem not part of the solution is both incomprehensible and tragic. People, you have a remarkable organic thinking device inside your skull, please use it!! He is so obviously part of the solution.

7. The idea of Palmer, Bellingham, Saka and Foden trying to make sense of Lampard’s ‘tactics’ is very scary. This cannot become real.

8. Kane and Rice as captain and vice captain saying things like: The way to react to losing finals is to work harder (Kane). It’s not, the reaction should be to THINK harder. The way to beat Spain is to run through brick walls (Rice). It’s not, you have to OUT THINK Spain and use the ball better. As long as we have these neanderthal pub footballers in our midst we’ll never win a trophy.
Ben Teacher

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Where England fall down
England have never been a tournament team. They tick most of the boxes to become one but miss a couple of the most important.

1. The team is more important than any one star player. Gareth Southgate knew well in advance that Harry Kane was not 100% fit. Management strength ought to have prevailed and he ought not to have started matches until his fitness was proven.

2. Once your best system set-up has been decided you must pick 2 outfield players for each position. Do not pick 20 best outfield players based on ability alone. Had there even been one other left back England might’ve been better balanced. But no left backs were selected apart from a very clearly unfit Luke Shaw. Luke Shaw should not have been in the squad and quite possibly Harry Kane too. That is down to a couple of very bad decisions by Gareth Southgate.

England and Portugal suffered from the same affliction namely being in awe to the cult of the undroppable superstar.

England need a manager like Ange Postecoglou. “If we’re going down then let’s swing a few punches and see where they land”
Hugh Jamieson

Blaming the media and fans
The BBC team has been an absolute disgrace. I used to really like Lineker. I guess he got sick of giving the platform to others to compete on who can say the catchiest phrase.

It’s been pointed out a few times that England seemed to play like Man Utd did last year. You mean with fear? Fear that a whole nation, their nation, will wish them and their families gone, or worse. It really is ridiculous that you spent the month before the Euros laughing at the insane pressure the fans and media will put on the players, and then proceeded to do just that from game one without a pause.

The players should be more mature and ignore all the clamour as you call it (bs as I call it) but it’s the home media and fans that are supposed to help give them confidence and pick them up when they are down. Instead you all just used them as your emotional punchbag. Or dumpster. Or disposable douche bag. Or just shitter.

That’s what the mailbox is supposed to be for, not the team you support and the players you hope will win YOU stuff. When the Euros started I didn’t think too much of these players but they have shown great character, pushed almost all the way even though no one believed in them. People, you lost to Spain, in a Euro final, with a goal in the 86th minute. If you don’t celebrate all the players, coaches and everyone involved, you are not an England fan.
Zdravko (not an England fan)

Gareth Southgate is not box office
Harry Kane scored 44 goals for Bayern Munich last season and also had the highest number of assists, a team that plays on the front foot, a team that dominates possession, has Musiala, Sane, Gnabry and Kimmich. Harry Kane missed/played the end of the season with a back injury.

Harry Kane looked slow, tired and isolated in this tournament. 90% (maybe 100) of mails sent in called for Kane to be rested and possibly used as an impact sub if needed, yet one man insisted on playing him in every game, another man was either too arrogant or too weak to suggest that he be rested, that he felt unfit to start.

One man admitted his own short sightedness after 60 minutes of the final. One man reduced England’s ability to score goals by playing a system and having a mentality that failed to get anywhere near the potential of this side and the best(?) out of the players available, fit or otherwise! Harry Kane showed no emotion at being substituted 5 times in 7 games, probably as many times a he’s been substituted in his previous 91 appearances.

The “despite” argument is strongest this morning, players did produce “moments” to mask the managers absolute mediocrity, just before Spain scored the winner, the manager was preparing Connor effin Gallagher as his next substitution, with extra time looming he obviously envisaged holding out for penalties.

The manager is not Die Hard, he’s not Taken, he’s not Mission Impossible (despite this being said”, he’s not even Rocky, he’s Steven Seagal, a half decent performance which would be delivered better by someone else and certainly never a blockbuster.

On another note, can you imagine the mailbox and comments if TAA had allowed space behind him for Spain to score twice!
Howard (Saka never went past Cucarella once) Jones

England need a ruthless manager
Best team in the tournament won. Played great football, worked hard and dominated all their games. As for England their form this year has been poor. Including the final they have played 11 games and won only 3 in 90 mins. Whoever is next manager has to learn to be ruthless. Kane and Bellingham, two players who would have considered to be their star players, should have been dropped. Yes they score vital goals but their overall contribution in the tournament was poor. The new manager has to play the best team not necessarily the best players.
Ken, Cork, Ireland

Thank you Gareth
My first experience supporting England in any football tournament was Mexico 1986.

In many ways I couldn’t have had a better tournament to introduce me to following England.

That year we were knocked out due to Maradona cheating and since then penalties, a perfectly good goal that wasn’t and not even qualifying have stood in our way.

Before Southgate, supporting England meant making the last eight (if we were lucky) and the semi finals in those very, very special once in a blue moon tournaments.

But since then we’ve made successive Euros finals and the men have achieved their first final on foreign soil – now emulating the women.

My experience of supporting England has meant I never follow our finals with any real belief we can actually win anything, but the very fact we’re playing in finals is down to Gareth Southgate and the England players.

Spain were the better team and well done to them but they were all tournament and while I appreciate everyone is gutted today, if last night was Gareth’s last hurrah, I would like to thank him for taking us fans on an epic journey twice over.
Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

It’s not a ‘one man’ problem
I’ve tried about three times to pen something deep and insightful about the game but what’s the point? We were never in the game save for 5 minutes before and after Palmer’s goal and a team like Spain were always going to punish our style of football. Surely it’s better to die trying?

My thoughts quickly turned to what’s next. Listening to the pundits it’s clear that no one actually has a clue how to get the most (aka a trophy) out of this undoubtedly talented bunch of players.

Play Palmer from the start, drop Kane, drop Foden, we can’t fit everyone into our system. Well that’s only the case if you insist on playing two DMs, we dont need them. Rice/Mainoo, Bellingham and Foden Should be the central three. This is nothing like the Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes conundrum, they are completely different players whose skill sets should work perfectly together. Our midfield from the France 22 game was Henderson, Rice and Foden. Just swap Henderson for Bellingham. Get rid of this idea that Bellingham and Foden need to be up front standing on Kane’s toes, they are the playmakers.

Give Saka a run on the left, Palmer on the right and switch them over every now and again. He shouldn’t have been playing but I don’t think Kane is done, he was clearly unfit but we didn’t play to his strengths or even in a way that would get him through games. He must have been told to drop deep like that in the hope that it would make space but we had no-one breaking the lines with runs from deep so it was pointless.

We are in danger of going backwards here, and are in danger of sacrificing some great players. Wanting to ‘play front foot football’ is all well and good, but the only way we can do that is if we are set up to play it – dropping one player for another will not do the trick. If Southgate goes, and I think he should with high praise, it will need to be a delicate operation given the squad’s regard for him. The worst thing we can do is look for a big name manager, feels to me the best move would be to promote Lee Carsley.
Tom (yes, I am a stuck record…)

Pickford is clearly kicking under instruction
Seen a few comments about how Pickford can’t kick a ball in the last mailbox and in some of the comments. He made a couple of mistakes with his kicking last night where it went straight out of play or straight through to their keeper. But overall I think he did okay. I think the bigger problem is that when he went long and did get it into a good area – which happened a good deal.

We couldn’t the first ball, never mind second balls or knock downs. Kane was out jumped and out muscled every time he went up for a header. I can only assume Pickford had instructions from Southgate to go long as he tried it so many times.

He’s fully capable of passing to defenders or firing it into the midfield, and if those were the instructions he would be doing that. I think people are just thinking he boots it up for fun? He’s following instructions. It’s much easier to get a pass rate up into the 80s or 90s when you are playing short 1-2s to your defence but I think we all know how that would have gone as we failed time and time again to play through the Spain press. The main problem was the tactics and the lack of hold up play up front.

At the risk of repeating every other mail and pundit… I said after the Netherlands game that Southgate doesn’t know how to get the best out of the attackers he has. He did fairly well at setting the team up to be compact and hard to break down, but Spain were just too good at creating space and deserved to win. We didn’t embarrass ourselves with the world watching, I’m glad it wasn’t 3 or 4-0. But you can only guess at how well the players would do with a more attacking and progressive manager.
James EFC

…Such a shame this tournament went as it did, with the final a kind of fitting end unfortunately. Many including me have pointed to the most obvious on-field issue (Kane) but even that isn’t entirely the player’s fault. People pointing out the ridiculousness of Pickford booting the ball long to no one, again not entirely his fault.

The problem was, is and will always be Southgate. He has had a collection of excellent parts, but somehow not managed to fashion them into a sensible tactical approach. Southgate is a manager who had a number of half-built lego pieces, and then tried to stick them together, but in the process stuck a pirate ship with a spacecraft and house. That he is the only person who can’t see why it didn’t work is mindboggling.

You don’t boot the ball long to Kane, he’s not going to win the ball in the air (that’s Toney). You don’t permit Kane to drop deep if you don’t provide pace down the wings to get beyond him and stretch the team. You don’t play Walker who can’t cross or stay in his position against the most dangerous member of the opposition.

That he then decided that the solution was to throw everyone on at once – Palmer, Foden, Saka, and Bellingham at the same – while taking off the one guy who was sitting deep and trying to break up attacks (where his influence from previous matches was negated) was insane. It wasn’t tactical brilliance, it was absolute desperation.

I’m sure Gareth is a nice guy, and he has had a major beneficial effect on the National side. We’ve now reached finals, which we hadn’t done for a very long time (although the major credit has to go to the players who somehow rescued results). But he doesn’t have the ability to assemble a coherent side or approach that these excellent players are familiar with. There is no style of play, there is no real strategy. He just doesn’t have the bollocks to make the big decisions. Even after the match he’s lamenting the absence of Henderson and Maguire for god’s sake! And he’s back to claiming the players weren’t fit. If they’re not fit, DON’T PICK THEM!

Hopefully, by the time the next mailbox is published, the news will have come through. But I doubt it, as that would be timely.
Badwolf

England need to improve in transition
This recently introduced phrase describes the key area where England should have done more, and perhaps is the area where Southgate has failed to encourage players to take risks, or as I see it a more logical course of action.

Too many times when we won the ball it went long to a non-existent threat in the air to hold it up (Kane, who didn’t seem to challenge successfully for anything) when there should have been sharper distribution to wide players, or quicker movement switching from one side to another. I get so frustrated seeing the slowing down of play once possession is won; this passing across the back line, to wide full backs, back across to centre backs, repeat, repeat, at club level. It allows the defending team to set and they don’t have to expend much energy in doing so.

What is needed is momentum. It actually did happen last night with a few balls out wide, and the first touch of our players, Shaw and Saka I noted, was great, but their second touch and instinct was to pass back from that position. Instead they should have been on the front foot and attacked the defender.

Get in the head of the defender at that point; someone’s pinged a pass quickly to the player you are covering, you’re not quite close enough, their first touch is fantastic, then they start running at you. Quite a bit of pressure hits your mind ‘God, he’s confident. Is my positioning good? What’s the shape of my team elsewhere? Is someone backing me up, are they switched on?’

What’s the huge risk in that when you are attacking? Yes, the player may lose the ball when dribbling, he may be tackled. On the plus side you’ve made defenders react and work hard. The current thinking is to hold on to possession to control the game. But when your only other tactics are to lump it to a forward from the keeper to then lose it, or to pass it around the back line with no penetration (and be pressed further back in doing so), it must pay to take the more adventurous path and create chances. Put the opposition on the back foot and try wear them down mentally and physically.

Then the running inside, the overlaps (as long as full backs don’t over commit) and angled balls inside to the likes of Watkins, or the creative players, become more of a threat.

I don’t think this is just a Southgate problem but he’s certainly a purveyor of ‘holding on to possession, reduce the risks’. Whilst you have the players that can hurt the opposition, use them at what they are good at. Shame we only seemed to do that when it was all or nothing at the end of matches.
TyA, Essex

The curse of Kane
So, loads of finger pointing in the media and in the hallowed F365 mailbox today. But surely we need to address the one (and probably only) reason why England lost yesterday:

The Curse of Kane

Clearly England had no chance of winning whilst being captained by the serial runner up. The guy would come second if he was the only entrant in a Harry Kane look-a-like competition.

Kane Out – then maybe even Southgate can forge a winning team.
Exiled Gooner (odds on Kane never wins a major trophy)

READ: Harry Kane the greatest footballer ever to win nothing – star Ferguson ‘singled out’ in top five

Mailbox Declan Rice