Just caught the highlights, looked like Laing and Harrison moments in extra time, Walker was shoddy an all.

I thought the midfield was more culpable than defence if you are going to play like that you have to show for and protect the ball, Declan Rice looked totally out of his depth for me immobile, slow and limited. I have never rated Barclay and Delph has barely started a game all season. We never had control of the game in midfield. I reckon if we’d have started with our best team we’d have beaten them.

This possession football, especially in our own third is suicidal unless you're sitting on a comfortable lead but not at 1-1. One mistake, especially at the highest level and you're allowing top class strikers a pot at goal.
At our level you can get away with it more often as the opposition are just as likely to bollocks the opportunity up.
I still don't like it and find it boring.
Keeping possession COULD win you the game, as long as everyone stays focussed and no mistakes are made like giving the ball away ( a real tall order and probably impossible).
Scoring the most goals will DEFINITELY win you the game. I prefer the emphasis to be put on that.

It works for Man City because of how good the rest of the team are. The defence are rarely exposed and when they are and they then make mistakes they have Edison behind them. Pickford is a capable keeper but not at the same level as the top two Brazilian keepers.

I'd rather watch a team trying to play good football and make occasional blunders that a team going route one all the time.
Those who are against this football clearly want Big Sam back. This England team & staff are the best we've had in years but are still someway short of the top teams. The kids are winning though so to me that suggests we're on the right track.

Also, if Brexit allows the FA to impose quotas on overseas players then it surely has to be done. Did anyone else notice how many English players started in the Arsenal vs Chelsea Europa League final?

Just read Southgates reasoning for the goals.
Seems it was not the style of play but Fatigue, And of course he,s right i almost fell asleep watching.
Taking 5,10,15 passes to get to the halfway line, Totally ignoring the runs off the ball the forwards were making.

So fatigue it was then, Southgate saw it himself, But he,s not altering

Biggest mistake was not selecting Liverpool and spurs players after CL

On the other hand how many started the CL final a lot more

Just read Southgates reasoning for the goals.
Seems it was not the style of play but Fatigue, And of course he,s right i almost fell asleep watching.
Taking 5,10,15 passes to get to the halfway line, Totally ignoring the runs off the ball the forwards were making.
Thats why Harry was becoming more and more frustrated. And as we all know if you don,t supply those runs
The forwards will stop making them.

So fatigue it was then, Southgate saw it himself, But he,s not altering THAT style of play so we are stuck with boring.

Now Southgate was a half decent defender himself i think its fair to say, But he could not have coped with that style of play.

Fatigue, it p***** me off none of today’s modern footballers have worked a hard days graft in their life, they get pampered from day 1.
Me like many others worked 10/12 hour shifts 6/7 days a week all my life, if I didn’t turn up ‘fatigued’ or not I didn’t get paid. We lived in shit hole digs, a few pints after finishing our 10/12 shift, a take away after that then up any 6 the following day.

Awaits PJ telling you that professional football has no comparison etc.

Wow. Did you see any of the Champions League final? All of the players were dead on their feet after 20 minutes. This was after having 3 weeks off from competitive action.

All clubs have sport science departments and will analyse data related to whether a player is going to be fatigued or not and thus more likely to become injured. This wasn't required at the Champions League final because even Dirty Sid could see that the players were goosed. It probably didn't help that it was +30 degree heat mind.

Running 10k every match with some players playing over 60 times a season for club and country will take its toll.

I'm not making excuses for England though as they were dire.

I blame John Stones, who had a mare of a game, and the way VAR is being used. The offside against Lingard was absolutely marginal - bollocks to imaginary lines across the pitch, if the ref or the lino has made an obvious rick, fair enough, overturn the decision, but when it's that close it shouldn't even be reviewed.

2-1 to the Ingerland in normal time.

Because it was so marginal should it have stood as linesman’s call?

Would you have thought the same if it was a Dutch goal?

I’m not 100% sure it was offside, the photo being used to prove it was about 3 inches offside is possibly taken a split second after the ball leaves Barkleys boot. I think it was so close to be impossible to say with certainty it was offside.

VAR is only supposed to overturn clear and obvious errors l don’t think this was clear or obvious. Maybe I’m biased, especially as it was one of the best team goals I’ve ever seen England score, which would have been replayed for decades!

No one is advocating hoofball.
However playing a precise passing game in and around your own box needs absolute concentration and accuracy, not to mention controlling the ball quickly whilst speed merchants are closing you down with the sole intention of forcing you into errors.
If it was fatigue that caused the errors then that's another reason not to do it because fatigue causes lapses in concentration, so Southgate is underlining my point.
There are times to play silky football and there are times to put yer foot through it.
It's all about balance but what wins football matches are goals, first last and then some. As I said earlier, it's different if you're say 4-0 up but at 1-1 if you want to win the game you have to score at least one more goal and you don't do that by playing forty passes in your own half.
You're just asking to be picked off and we were picked off.

There were a couple of incidents in the game last night where the TV commentators thought VAR might be used but it wasn't. There's obviously some discretion being allowed by the video ref, otherwise there'd be half a dozen or more hold ups in every match, which would make football almost as stop/start as NFL or rugby.

I think they shouldn't get involved in really marginal calls - unless the ref and the lino have seen an incident differently and it needs adjudicating. I wasn't aware that that was happened last night.

I've often wondered if a "ref's call" option should be made available for things like this. Like you have in c ricket. The only difference IMO is whereas hawkeye is a prediction (albeit a pretty accurate one) of what would have happened had the ball not hit the pad, VAR uses a replay of what actually happened so there isn't really an error margin.


Ultimately the rules are what they are but I tend to agree with MDKMF in that it feels as if legitimate goals are being chalked off for nothing.


I remember reading an article about offside reviews in ice hockey and whilst the comparison is clearly imperfect given the vastly different nature of what offside is in both sports it seems the gripes fans have is basically the same as in football https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/apr/25/nhl-playoffs-offside-rule-ice-hockey

Having said all this England didn't deserve to win

Agree, they should leave the decisions to the officials and use VAR for off the ball incidents and dangerous play, at this rate we won,t have any officials the game will be ran by robots !

And you claim others are obsessed with you?

Would it be wrong of me to suggest that we lost because we're not good enough yet?

No, it’s a fair point. Last night was a fairly brutal reality check, but it’s still a bit of a kick in the nuts to have a very good goal disallowed because it’s at most a couple of inches offside.

Centre backs worry me the most mind.