Rob1981

You can blame the authorities if you want, but what kind of pathetic narcissist wants to get out there in the first place. Pinnacle of these players’ careers, idolised around the world... and you’re a CELEBRITY CHEF () Just leave them the **** alone

FACT CHECK This stat is not true. Repeat, not true. Such is my devotion to Gareth that I've found a site with all the historic FIFA rankings on it, and married this up against all our match dates. Games against Top 10 (Top 10 at the time we played them) = 20 Wins = 5 Draws = 7 Losses = 8 Losses include the dead rubber group game against Belgium and the third place playoff, also Nations League games when we were rotating players. Wins came against Switzerland (2018 friendly), Spain & Croatia (Nations League), Belgium (Nations League), Denmark (Euros). But excludes the wins against Croatia and Germany at Euro 2020 because they were just outside the top 10 at the time. And want to talk about PROGRESS? Up to and including WC 2018 our Top 10 success rate was: P7, W0, D3, L4 Post WC2018 it is: P13, W5, D4, L4 Same. Old. Southgate.

I'm not sure half of it should count tbh Should be judging him on the progress he's made and the evolution of the squad. Not sure him losing a 2016-17 friendly with inherited players like Phil Jones and Adam Lallana and Jake Livermore is the gotcha people think it is.

Teams in the current Top 10, we are P19, W4, D6, L9. Maybe 24 comes from teams being in the top 10 at the point that we played them, but cba to work this out.

Great montage this. Up there with the best of them.

But you've said this again and again and again I'm not saying he got everything right. But you keep comparing it to 2018 where we played a completely different type of match with a completely different set of players.

May as well post that graphic where we blame Southgate for only beating Paraguay and Trindad & Tobago and Ecuador in 2006, even though he was working for ITV at the time.

But we did play more progressive football We went toe to toe with one of the best two teams in the competition. More shots, more possession, more corners, more passes. By any objective measure we were equal to them, if not better. Watch any of the highlights reels and there were more England chances than France chances. We went into that game believing we could win it instead of just hoping that we might. And for large parts we looked like we deserved to. So I'm sorry, but the "same old Southgate" stuff is just lazy. Fact is, you'd made your mind up about Southgate before we'd kicked a ball. I mean, I'd made my mind up too. But if we'd lost 3-0 to France I would have admitted I was wrong. Whereas if we'd beaten France 3-0 you would say it was because they "bottled it", or because Mbappe had an off day, or because they had too many players out, or because we relied too much on set pieces or because Sterling got a soft penalty or something.

Wait, what? We can count all Argentina's chances but we can only count England's open play goals? Sounds fair.

Scored a combined 24 goals, 23 of them when they weren't a goal down.

Ignore me

Sorry, Brazil-Croatia was “maybe close”, but Argentina-France was one-sided? Even though both penalty shootouts finished 4-2? Glad we cleared that up.

It’s not, but it’s really lazy to say Argentina have a 86% success rate and Italy have a 25% success rate, therefore Argentina must have done something right every time and Italy must be doing something wrong. You’re comparing a handful of shootouts spread over a period of 30+ years, with different players and different managers and different amounts of preparation. Also different contexts in terms of how the preceding 120 minutes have gone. Instead of looking by country, you might find more of a pattern if you looked at which teams had more club-level penalty takers to pick from at the time, or who had the keeper with the better penalty save ratio, or which teams went first, or which teams had the momentum because they had come from behind in normal play or something. In the whole of WC history there have still only been about 30-35 shootouts altogether so it’s a tiny sample size to look at either way.

Im not saying you can’t prepare for penalties, but where Italy, England and Netherlands have got 1 win and 3 losses these are pretty small sample sizes It’s like tossing a coin and getting three heads and one tail and going “I’ve never understood how people can say it’s got two sides”.

I reckon we’ve got one free date for a friendly in October because we are in a qualifying group with eight teams instead of a qualifying group with ten teams. We’ve already put a friendly in with Scotland for our free date in September, but that still leaves one slot spare. So quite likely we get Germany here I guess, since most other big teams will have qualifiers of their own and won’t have the date free.