joey_big_nose

The Alli, Sterling and Lingard numbers are appalling, didn't realise it was that bad! Needs to be addressed desperately. The one goal in four hours one is a bit daft. In the three hours before we scored eight! That's just cherry picking. Edit - I just checked the official stats. Lingard has actually had eight shots. Just only two on target. Which is somewhat a different message. Sterling has had 5. Alli has had a pathetic 3 in total! And Kane has only had 9. But he scored 6 of them! And three of them penalities. Shots on goal by out forward players does seem a significant issue even if not quite as bad as you made it sound!

Somewhere around zero I would say. Despite having a really quite good international goal scoring record. Maybe he's England's Klose but we will never find out because he never plays? Actually thinking about it we might give him a spin in the last 30 if Sweden defend deep as he is okay in the air. I'm just always confused by what type of stirker he actually is.

I think part of it is 1) Sterling's goal stats are terrible for someone playing striker 2) Rashford and Vardy present genuine alternative starters who have vastly better goal scoring record 3) while I personally think Sterling has done much better than he is made out to by many on here he hasn't ever had an excellent game for England. Lingard has. Alli has had quite a few good ones (seem a long time ago now). That gives you something to point to and warms the fans to you. All that said Southgate has stuck with him to this point and I can't see him being dropped. He's said from the outset that his picked a system and a team to fit that system. And he obviously feels that Sterling is the right man. So he's got at least one more game to prove the doubters wrong.

Don't agree on this at all. Vardys game is play on the shoulder, so every time he's been on the gap between our midfield and strikers expands hugely which is a major issue as we only have three mids. I'd put Rashford in ahead of him as he can drop off and link up too.

If you look at the squads on paper we really should beat Sweden. Colombia are a considerably better team in my book. Colombia have one superstar (luckily out injured against us) and four or five high quality Champions League players. I genuinely thought Colombia could send us out even if we played to our best ability if they turned up. On the other hand Sweden have zero super stars and zero regular Champions League players. Obviously theyve had a great tournament and are very astute tactically but in the cold light of day we really should beat them or something has gone wrong. No disrespect to Sweden meant at all, they've had some cracking players in the past, and we'll have to play at our best to not get beaten like Germany, Switzerland Mexico before. But if we do play at our best we should win because of the gap in quality. But again same was true against Iceland two years ago, so let's not count our chickens...

Agree that Walker is not convincing, we don't seem to be getting the benfits of his recovery pace or overlap in attack . Plus his passing range seems limited. Arguably we could move Dier in there. More composed, and will pass his way out like Stones and Maguire. Not quick though if we get caught on the break. Jones and Cahill both just don't have the quality on the ball to slot in.

For what it's worth I though first half we played okay, moved well and passed okay, and improved sligtly in the second half. We controlled he game without ever looking very threatening. No shots on target as others have said. The Colombian two centre backs were superb, kept on clearing or just getting their heads on the final ball in. Must have denied Maguire 3 times. Then last 10 mins and first half of extra time it was all Colombia. I genuinely thought we were out. Rashford coming on made a difference and we got back in control. But couldn't score and then never thought we would win on penalties ever. On Colombians being dirty, they were disgraceful. But Young could easily have had a red card for going over the top of the ball. We didn't cover ourselves in glory. Quite a few of our players lost their cool. Sweden are the sort of team we typically succeed against. But we will see.

England look like theyre in the headlights now. Terrified. Not sure whats the answer is. I think Rashford would have been a better sub than Vardy. Vardy just looks isolated and doesn't link up.

Not sure where you are coming from on that. Belgium I understand, they are a few rungs above us in terms of quality, but we easily have players that Japan or Russia have. It's about showing the same tactical nous and intensity as they did in their games.

I thought Hoddle did a good job for England too. I was talking being a top club manager through winning club trophies. Don't really think Venables falls in that category. One FA Cup with Spurs and one La Liga with Barca. Bobby Robson is a good shout. He won the league all over Europe (Holland, Spain, Portugal). Less successful in England though - but got an FA Cup and UEFA cup with Ipswich. Looking at this list is quite interesting. You have to go back to Bob Paisley to find a dominant English manager. Why did he never get the job? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_championship-winning_managers

Big problem though is England have not produced a top manager since Clough. So who would you appoint? We've gone down the tried and tested route with Capello and Eriksson with mediocre results. Both were supposed to have a golden generation at their disposal (I would quibble with that, but anyway..) If you look around, top club managers do not dominate international football. Many successful international managers have little or poor club experience. Joachim Low was a relatively untested club manager who took over Germany simply because Klinsmann left and he was part of the setup. Very similar to Southgate. What I like about Southgate is that 1) he knows his best side, 2) put a lot of thought into how we are tactically set up , building an innovative system designed to get the best out of a bluntly average squad - really no mean feat 3) is positive without over confidence in his interactions with the press. I reckon England have a roughly 40% chance of losing tonight. Player for player we are only slightly better than Colombia. It's the manner of how we play I am most interested in. If we are intense, give everything, intelligently change tactics to respond to the flow of the game, but get beat by quality from James or another top player, I wouldn't be against him staying on. The mentality of sacking and starting again really hasn't got us anywhere. If theres a top candidate we can point to and say "bring him in!" that's different. But there isn't. We would only appoint someone else you are deflated by. I suppose we could go out and offer the job to Zinedine Zidane. He's just won 3 European Cups. Would you want him in charge? I suspect you would be on here banging on about how he isn't English and doesn't care.

Sounds about right to me!

Fabulous performance by Japan. Totally gutted for them. Belgium ultimately won that not by being better footballers, but just by being bigger and faster. I think Colombia will have watched that game and Denmark Vs Croatia and concluded the way forward against wing backs is to come out very aggressively and pin our wide players. Ulimately Belgium needed to find a plan B (bring Fellanni on). We don't have a plan B I think. So let's hope plan A works

Japan very impressive. But don't think they will be able to keep it up. Belgium have the players to get them eventually. See it finishing very similar to the Mexico vs Brazil game.

I'm not counting on anything. Yesterday I assumed both Croatia and Spain would get easy wins but quite the opposite happened. Its would be keeping for this world cup if Japan and Mexico end up going through. Do think Brazil have too much quality though, and they - unlike Spain - will attack relentlessly. Belgium seems the likelier slip up. But then they are very adaptable. If Japan defend ultra deep they can start pumping it into the box for Lukaku.

Both Spain and Croatia very tactically poor tonight. Outrageous really when you consider the wealth of talent each side has. What a bizarre world cup. All the most talented teams are having stinkers, except Brazil, Belgium and France. Spain needed to get the ball into the box far more often, while Croatia lost their midfield shape totally in the second half. Croatia scraped through but I don't fancy them against the Russians who will defend even better than the Danes did. Never thought I would say that. It is looking very tempting for England as the one thing we do have if we end up playing a ultra defensive side like Russia is Harry Kane to get the ball into. And we're also pretty good at set pieces. So we could make it happen against the likes of Sweden or Russia. That said we have to negotiate a tough opponent in Colombia first.

If I was a Spanish fan I would be livid. All that quality on the pitch but tactically Spain were poor. Kept on with the same ineffective patterns right up until the las.t ten minutes. Game like that where the opposition is so deep you need to get the ball into the box, ideally with two strikers in there. Instead they kept on playing on front of the Russian defence. Taking Costa off as early as he did seemed very strange to me. If they go out they've got themselves to blame.

I read up on Wikipedia and youre right - Xhaka, Behrami and Shakiri were all born in the the former yugoslavia. Plus the squad has a further six or so players born in Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia, so all ex Yugoslavs.

I think those Swiss players like xhaka and Shakiri are Albanian, so would not actually have been from the former yugoslavia area. Anyhow agree both Croatia and Serbia are good teams, plus you would have Dzeko from Bosnia in there too. But its not a new thing - yugoslavian national football team was a big beast of international football. Made two European championship finals, finished third and fourth at the world cup, and won gold and three silvers at the Olympics. Great pedigree.

Yup them and Croatia really shoe that being a small nation doesn't need to be a hindrance.

I think that's all fair. We are miles off the standard of players that Brazil, Spain, France and Belgium have, and lack the kind of individual quality of Croatia or Uruguay, but we're competitive against anyone else who got through. The target remains the quarter finals. That's a good tournament.

For me today has really emphasised that France and Brazil are the teams to beat. France blew Argentina away, and while Uruguay are fantastically organised and very effective on the break they lack creative quality and the ability to control games. Not sorry Portugal and Argentina are out. Neither of them should have got out of the group stage.

Hey look, I'm not saying we don't have a chance. Just that in any particular game it's 50-50 against the likes of Colombia, and maybe 25-75 against us when we play one of the big hitters like Brazil, Spain or France. Of course we can win it - a poor Portugal team and Greece (!!) both won the Euros. It's just probability wise pretty low.

I genuinely don't think he is. Expectations are low, he's got a poor selection of players. As long as we aren't embarrassed he'll get another two years easy. The FA have done the merry go round of managers. From their perspective it's better just to stick with what they have. There's no indication spending she'd loads on a fancy manager (plus the payoffs when you sack them) actually helps you win anything .

Yes, Trippier, Kane, Lingard and Alli would have all made a huge difference. But then you do have to temper that with Belgium were not playing Hazard, De Bruyne and Lukaku... If anyone was losing quality Belgium were losing a lot more of it....!