[quote=Fudd;82830120]


Walcott, Sterling and Townsend were big white hopes two years ago, like Kane and Alli are now. Going by Kane and Alli's perforvmances in this tournament I have to wonder whether the 2014 generation were 'ahead' at this stage.



Ironically, none of them are big or white...

Agree with this

England have done ok, bit wonky here and there but people going on about how crap we really need to learn about football. Week in week out people complain about negative football and how it kills games, well England just played 3 teams with no desire to win, they all played extremely defense negative football.

Its a fair enough tactic, its boring as shit to watch, and plenty of other teams are doing it (Germany struggled, France almost got caught out with it, Portugal are really struggling with it), they just defend and hope for a lucky goal or a draw.

The fact England were able to boss the pitch for most of the matches, yet could not get goals should tell you something, they were trying to break down extremely defensive teams who had no desire to go out and win.

Now we are in the knockout stages, hopefully we dont have to deal with it as much but no doubt some will still play for the lucky goal or the dying moment snatch win, spending most of the match with 10 men behind the ball, smashing it away, reset, defend defend defend. Its sad and I am glad England haven't done that, at least they are going out and trying to win like potential champions would want to win, with some style. Wales have nothing to be proud off, abject shit from them, its like watching Sunderland or a Pulis team.

I think this is a consequence of the new format with 4 third place teams also going through, meaning one win and a draw or even three draws could get a team to the round of 16. Hopefully when the knockouts begin teams will open up more and our strikers, who are all very good, will have more room to do their stuff.

Manchester United dominate possession in nearly every game last season, do nothing with it - "Boooo! You're crap!"

England play the same way - "We've been unlucky; best England team in 20 years!"

Gotta love the English media.

Well done Wales, best TEAM in the group and deserved to win it.

Deleted. Want to avoid a backlash

The fact that a mediocre Welsh side topped the group says it all - they scraped by Slovakia, did barely anything against England yet still managed to come first.

It's not about the performance; it's about goals. And in fairness they took their chances, albeit assisted by two dire goalkeeping decisions. But they have looked nothing special so far.

Slovakia playing a 10 man defence didn't really help matters, very negative play just wanted to prevent England from scoring to get a draw, Slovakia were happy to finish 3rd in the group and had no ambition for anything higher.

Well where was this dominance? We had 10% more possession that's hardly dominance in my book! And what did we do with this extra 10% possession, Sweet FA. We don't play as a team, we have no glue where other players are, so we have to constantly slow down, look up to find other players, they should know where other players are, that's what trainings for. The amount of times last night we made a break, only to have the player slow and then take what seemed an eternity to find another player to pass too.

Our strikers are a joke, do they even know where the goal and goalkeeper are, do they know how high the goal is, it's football not rugby your playing.

You know when it's getting bad, when at the start of the second half the commentators have to mention that coming second is no problem as the first and second placed teams will have to face similar opposition.

And don't even mention the commentators, were they even watching the same game?

The only thing I tend to notice about the commentators is if an England player takes a shot and miss or it get's saved they get berated for not making the most of the chance and they should have scored, but if any other teams player does the same it's called unlucky.

They haven't really, they can't score goals, if as you say (and I agree) that playing very defensive teams is hard, then surly it makes scoring, when you can all the more important. We've looked awful, 3 goals in 3 games isn't good enough! 1 was a set piece, the other 2 were very scrappy goals, and one of those was in the dying minutes of the game. We've scored no decent goals, that would worry any team.

Our shooting and actual scoring opportunities have been very poor, we've missed sitters, we hit the goalkeeper, we've shot so far over, a rugby player would be proud.

We're going to get taken apart if we play a team that actually wants to control and attack. Wales played a mediocre attacking game first half against us, and scored.

And the same people defending England now are they same people who defended them 2 years ago, and kept telling us "wait for the Euros", we'll I'm still waiting.

And what in hell is wrong with the set pieces, taking a corner and hitting the facing defender, can't you drop the ball into the box?

It was 61-39 in our favour with possession, so you should be twice as frustrated. Maybe. I can't do fractions.

Just look on the bright side at least they are through the group stage this time if anything else is achieved it's a bonus.

There cannot surely be anyone out there that was happy about how England played last night??

Slovakia did not want the ball, and were very happy for us to have it, so praising us for having it, it totally pointless, and misses that key point.

What we did with the ball is crucial here, we put in useless cross after useless cross, played long hopeful balls, and didn't test their keeper on enough occasions, to me that all adds up to a completely inept and dire performance.

If there are people say like Ian Wright who thought that we created a plethora of chances, and played well, then I do think you must have been watching that match through rose tinted glasses.

The whole point of football is that you win games by scoring goals. None other.
Pretty passing is an optional extra.
If you dominate possession but aren't scoring goals you aren't playing good football.

Yes, indeed, it is also not praiseworthy to say we dominated the ball, when they didn't want it, so using stats like we had more percentage of the ball then they did is totally irrelevant and useless.

I agree. It's noticeable that all the seeded teams have really struggled at times. That's because the mid and low ranking teams in the tournament are happy with a point when playing against them. We've seen world class players struggle to find the magic to open up these hardworking teams. It's anti-football! The smaller teams were actually better in the World Cup. Teams like Iran, Algeria, Costa Rica and the US really went for it but then only the top 2 in the group went through and national pride was at stake.

I remember that being said many times - 2008, 2012 ............

Possession is fine -so long as you DO SOMETHING with the ball. They didn't. Sturridge and Vardy should have come on later.

Given the crazy (and unfair) format of the Round of 16, England will be paired with the runner up of the second easiest group in the tournament (having just come out of the weakest) so coming second hasn't made England's tournament any more difficult, but Hodgson's "tactics" are making England's chances of progression almost on par with teams like Iceland and Wales. He is a genuinely terrible manager and if by some miracle England manage to go further, it will certainly be in spite of all his efforts.

BiB apart from the fact if we get to the Q/F we're now likely to play France in Paris.

And all the moanalots were saying they should start. They did start, and still they moan.

This is what frustrated me the most last night. As soon as we got into that final third, everyone stops and looks for a pass back to defence rather than trying to get down the flanks. Most of the players in the England squad run at other teams when playing in EPL. So why not when it comes to internationals when most other national squads probably play 50 - 75% of the pace we do? We seem to be afraid of letting in goals when really, attack is our only defence. Maybe that's at fault to Roy for trying to setup England with the "perfect tactician" mentality when we don't have hugely gifted individuals.

It almost felt like the players didn't want to play 100%, not even 50% and accepted a draw to reverse themselves for the next round. Bah!

Clyne certainly got wide a fair bit, as did Walker in the other two games.

All teams spend the game probing, and looking for openings these days, because teams are so well organised. The days of lumping it in the box to the big lad have gone.

We spent years with Beckham, Lampard and Gerrard who all played long balls most of the time, and got nowhere. We've actually caught up with other national teams. In years gone by we struggled to string passes together, and relied on our strength, and fitness. Those days are gone, because they haven't worked for years.

We're going in the right direction.

Yeah but Wales could get Croatia, Belgium/Portgual, Spain and then a final of either Germany / Italy or France

We *could* get Hungary, Northern Ireland, Czech Republic with Iceland in the final