It came home. Hope, hope came home

[daylight]

5 hours ago, GunmaN1905 said:

Which one in here are you?

(Pub in Scotland after Mandžukić scored.)

In all honesty I'm not sure if my neighbours will talk to me again.

We are an hour ahead in time than you guys in England, a lot of people were already in bed. When Croatia scored the winner I was also cheering, I know it's sad!
I asked the wife, who was also asleep, the next day if she heard me, before I even finished asking she replied "yeah I heard you screaming, I take it England are out then?" 

Sorry guys, I'll try to be better next time, it's just been breed into me from a very young age, it's really my parents fault, I can leave their telephone number if you want to give them a hard time!

[Wigmore]

Is it acceptable to cancel a date due to being depressed about the football?

Because that's what I've just done.

[enigmatic]

39 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

England have their system, and I like it, and i don't necessarily have a problem with two attacking mids. What England need to do is be more flexible in this system. When getting overrun, it should have become two natural centre mids alongside Henderson. You could have Dier as the pivot, Henderson all action, and Lingard/Alli as the more attacking CM if going mixed. You watch for the likes of Foden/Sancho, see if they can be your next playmaker.

What's disappointing is people looking at our squad and saying we couldnt do more, we definitely could have. We didn't maximise our flexibility at all. 

Our first team got overrun twice. Once against Colombia after Dier was brought on to act as the double pivot, and after the Croatia goal where Henderson was dead on his feet and we gambled on strikers to try to address our lack of goal threat instead of a Dier/Delph combo. Think we'd have been much more likely to see the double pivot in later rounds if we'd played someone who was a clear favourite and/or if Dier hadn't been so poor when he came on against Colombia.

Agree we could use a proper CM playmaker, but that's where the limitations of our squad and other options come in. Our only fit natural playmaker was Shelvey who's a bit slow for the system, and if you look at the games where he might have done that job better than others, it's basically only Tunisia (where we got the goal anyway) or being substituted on for an attacking player against Croatia, which might have been an interesting roll of the dice but he'd have been protecting his own goal as much as trying to use the ball better and I'm not sure I fancy him pressing Modric or trying leading a counter attack at pace.

Of course we could have done more in terms of actually making the final; we were an uncharacteristic Kane double miss away from probably being there and might well have hung on if Perisic hadn't quite controlled that high volley or had been harshly penalised, but I'm not sure there's an obvious tactical change that makes us more comfortable. Personally thought the weakest link all tourney was Walker at centre back, but if he doesn't play there our best performer in Trippier probably starts on the wrong side or bench.

[celtic_fc]

33 minutes ago, Wigmore said:

Is it acceptable to cancel a date due to being depressed about the football?

Because that's what I've just done.

Probably for the best, the semi would only be a letdown.

[westy8chimp]

56 minutes ago, Wigmore said:

Is it acceptable to cancel a date due to being depressed about the football?

Because that's what I've just done.

She had a lucky escape

[georginho_juventusygr]

You can have 11 England players to make a team of the tournament. #ExceptionalEngland

[scott MUFC]

sterling tho...

[toon_84]

I keep forgetting Newcastle fans got a load of stick for all the French players we signed a few years back. It's time to embrace it......

il rentre à la maison

[Svenc]

19 hours ago, JDownie said:

That's just embarrassing

Only chance of me celebrating like that is if Scotland win the WC one day

Plus:

[buffalo]

On 12/07/2018 at 20:02, buffalo said:

same feelings in Belgium tbh :/

let's call the Saturday match the real final then

we won the world cup hurrah!

[Weezer]

Knew it was bad, didn't realise it was that bad though! Thank god for VAR.

 

[daylight]

5 minutes ago, buffalo said:

we won the world cup hurrah!

I feel you guys could have if you hadn't beaten England the first time. 

Belgium are better than Croatia and I think they would've beaten France in the final.

[Weezer]

Januzaj can probably expect a few more clatterings in his next few training sessions.

[craigcwwe]

8 minutes ago, daylight said:

I feel you guys could have if you hadn't beaten England the first time. 

Belgium are better than Croatia and I think they would've beaten France in the final.

They lost to France a few days ago.

[bestbrother]

14 minutes ago, Weezer said:

Knew it was bad, didn't realise it was that bad though! Thank god for VAR.

 

Roll on the Southgate revolution

 

[Nordan]

The one thing England is missing imo is a creative player (KdB type), Loftus-Cheek looks like he could be that type.

I still feel Southgate is the weakest link, especially game management. Taking off aforementioned Cheek just feels like "it's what I always do" instead of a plan.

[scott MUFC]

Germany second on the shots list and went home bottom of the group.. useless stats

[Cedrik]

17 minutes ago, Nordan said:

The one thing England is missing imo is a creative player (KdB type), Loftus-Cheek looks like he could be that type.

I still feel Southgate is the weakest link, especially game management. Taking off aforementioned Cheek just feels like "it's what I always do" instead of a plan.

I don't agree with that at all. His focus on the set pieces has really worked out well for England, and he probably did not choose that way of playing because he wanted to, but because he knew the team would be helpless without as they are lacking in all the other departments. England got a decent level of fitness, a decent striker and some players with pace a decent dribble. That's about it. On the ball almost all the players are clueless, they just don't know what to do with it and constantly make wrong choices. Not one creative player will fix that, they need overall a lot more players with a deeper understanding of the game. 

[daylight]

22 minutes ago, craigcwwe said:

They lost to France a few days ago.

The final is a totally different beast.

They only lost 1-0, could easily reverse that.

[enigmatic]

3 hours ago, Weezer said:

Knew it was bad, didn't realise it was that bad though! Thank god for VAR.

 

Someone should tell FIFA to abolish set pieces since apparently the Times don't think shots from them count.

[toon_84]

3 hours ago, Weezer said:

Knew it was bad, didn't realise it was that bad though! Thank god for VAR.

 

0.9 shots on goal yet managed 1.7 goals a game. 

[westy8chimp]

3 hours ago, Weezer said:

Knew it was bad, didn't realise it was that bad though! Thank god for VAR.



Shouldnt be surprised... I been saying it for the last couple of weeks

[toon_84]

I've just worked it out now and it's actually 3.5 shots on goal per 90 minutes.

[westy8chimp]

2 minutes ago, toon_84 said:

I've just worked it out now and it's actually 3.5 shots on goal per 90 minutes.

You including replays? 

[toon_84]

1 minute ago, westy8chimp said:

You including replays? 

And analysis 

[Weezer]

43 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Someone should tell FIFA to abolish set pieces since apparently the Times don't think shots from them count.

I'm pretty sure the statistic is for shots in open play, that screenshot just doesn't show it. I'm sure you knew that though you pendant  

If anybody actually clicked the link the very next tweet actually explains the statistic. And of those 6 shots on target from open play from 10 hours of football one of them was the deflection of Harry Kane's heel!

Don't get why people get so overdefensive about criticisms of England's play in this tournament. If anything it shows that if we can add a bit of creativity to our play to our prowess at set pieces we could become a genuinely dangerous side, you don't always have to take the negative.

[georginho_juventusygr]

So many people undermine and belittle England's achievement. They should be ashamed.

[daylight]

17 minutes ago, georginho_juventusygr said:

So many people undermine and belittle England's achievement. They should be ashamed.

Undermine and belittle what?

They beat Tunisia in injury time, they beat one of the poorest sides I have ever seen at a WC, their B side got beaten by Belgiums B side, they then beat Colombia on pens,I still think Colombia would have won if Rodríguez was fit, they then beat Sweden. 

Trust me, if England had beaten say Belgium, Argentina maybe Uruguay then I would say, however much it hurt, how well they did, they didn't though. I honestly don't think they played that well, I think Kane went missing way too often and I can't understand the praise he is getting and the criticism Sterling is getting. 

Sterling did more for the team than Kane did, if Kane wasn't all for himself he would have passed to Sterling when England were 1-0 up against Croatia and Sterling would have made it 2-0.

At any rate I think most of the fans enjoyed the ride but never got seriously carried away. 

[Bliss Seeker]

 

Can we start another world cup from next week, I wanna do that again! 

[ArsenalFan7]

Not to detract from the achievement but the football from open play did border on an embarrassment at times. I would agree that the fans have been all too forgiving at the sheer happiness of the results. Fair enough, the set pieces have been excellent but we never particularly stood a chance against any of the larger nations relying upon those alone, it's something Southgate has to fix. I can only imagine how much the French would have bullied us with our sub par ability to create anything out in the open.

Felt a bit taboo to critique England throughout the tournament given the feel good factor and overprotection of our players. I did dare to question Kane from open play to my friends in suggesting he had been average at best and was slaughtered for it. They were all quiet after today and Croatia.. He may still be Sir Harry Kane but he wasn't the Tottenham Harry Kane we all know.

[georginho_juventusygr]

6 minutes ago, daylight said:

Undermine and belittle what?

They beat Tunisia in injury time, they beat one of the poorest sides I have ever seen at a WC, their B side got beaten by Belgiums B side, they then beat Colombia on pens,I still think Colombia would have won if Rodríguez was fit, they then beat Sweden. 

Trust me, if England had beaten say Belgium, Argentina maybe Uruguay then I would say, however much it hurt, how well they did, they didn't though. I honestly don't think they played that well, I think Kane went missing way too often and I can't understand the praise he is getting and the criticism Sterling is getting. 

Sterling did more for the team than Kane did, if Kane wasn't all for himself he would have passed to Sterling when England were 1-0 up against Croatia and Sterling would have made it 2-0.

At any rate I think most of the fans enjoyed the ride but never got seriously carried away. 

Semifinal for the youngest and least experienced squad in this World Cup is a good achievement. Beating Tunisia in injury time was great since it showed that the boys were mentally up for overcoming any hurdle. Winning penalties and ending the sad tradition were also great. The executions of dead-ball situations according to the trainings were a joy to watch.

Everybody has the right to see that England were bad in breaking play up. They always did better in set pieces. But this doesn't take away the results that the team achieved. They scored and scored to get to the semifinal.

Just because there were no shots-on-goal from open play doesn't mean England didn't deserve the semifinal. There is little praise in this thread. No goals from open play means England were awful.

[enigmatic]

35 minutes ago, Weezer said:

I'm pretty sure the statistic is for shots in open play, that screenshot just doesn't show it. I'm sure you knew that though you pendant  

If anybody actually clicked the link the very next tweet actually explains the statistic. And of those 6 shots on target from open play from 10 hours of football one of them was the deflection of Harry Kane's heel!

Don't get why people get so overdefensive about criticisms of England's play in this tournament. If anything it shows that if we can add a bit of creativity to our play to our prowess at set pieces we could become a genuinely dangerous side, you don't always have to take the negative.

Don't think the graph was compiled with a view to showing off England's set piece prowess though. Only reason for excluding them (and the Times giving it an inaccurate caption) was to artificially make them look bad. England also topped the "shots on target from set pieces" stat for the tournament at the beginning of the day, largely for the same reason: when they pushed for goals, most opponents sat deep, giving away plenty of fouls and finding crosses a lot easier to head out of play when facing Kane and two midgets than Kane and two centre backs (the exception obviously being Croatia who kept the ball pretty well for 50 mins after levelling).

You can tell how stupid the "shots from open play" stat is by how it implies today's 2-0 defeat was a more dominant attacking performance by England than eviscerating a useless Panama

 

3 minutes ago, daylight said:

Sterling did more for the team than Kane did, if Kane wasn't all for himself he would have passed to Sterling when England were 1-0 up against Croatia and Sterling would have made it 2-0.  missed

Fixed that for you  

[georginho_juventusygr]

12 minutes ago, ArsenalFan7 said:

Not to detract from the achievement but the football from open play did border on an embarrassment at times. I would agree that the fans have been all too forgiving at the sheer happiness of the results. Fair enough, the set pieces have been excellent but we never particularly stood a chance against any of the larger nations relying upon those alone, it's something Southgate has to fix. I can only imagine how much the French would have bullied us with our sub par ability to create anything out in the open.

Felt a bit taboo to critique England throughout the tournament given the feel good factor and overprotection of our players. I did dare to question Kane from open play to my friends in suggesting he had been average at best and was slaughtered for it. They were all quiet after today and Croatia.. He may still be Sir Harry Kane but he wasn't the Tottenham Harry Kane we all know.

Open play was embarrassing because the players weren't good enough or underperforming.

For some reason, Kane was the one doing the drifting. He should have been in the box far more often.

Sterling danced. But bar creating havoc once in a while, he had no end product.

Alli was sub-par. Lingard too.

Walker isn't a central defender.

But the subs weren't good either. Rashford didn't really gel. Rose wasn't better than Young. Jones was a disaster.

If you sum them up, semifinal was a great achievement. They played to their strength, which happened to be set pieces.

[daylight]

5 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

 

Fixed that for you  

you could be right!

[Federico]

34 minuti fa, georginho_juventusygr ha scritto:

For some reason, Kane was the one doing the drifting. He should have been in the box far more often.

Yeah I noticed that too, even today. Probably Southgate had his own reason to instruct Kane to do this, but the many balls crossed in the box could have had a better player to head on goal.

Kane scored 6 goals, but he failed when they were counting the most, and that's a fact.

[Svenc]

13 hours ago, scott MUFC said:

Germany second on the shots list and went home bottom of the group.. useless stats

Depends which ones you look at.   Purely xG also cracks over the fact that Germany trailed behind a lead every time, e.g. were forced to try to create quality opportunity whilst their opponent could sit further back and deny it. Same as it doesn't show how easy it was until their respective leads for Mexico and Sweden to get into the German box (counters). Let alone the remarkable amount of counters wasted before a shot could be applied from Mexico. Either of which over the longer term doesn't happen that often, as typically teams adjust. Of course, if one of those Hummels headers goes in against Korea, they may have still progressed -- if you will and depending on your interpretation, despite it all. It's fair to assume that on FM's level of feedback, you would have rage quit. No less as each match would have likely still shown multiple "clear-cuts", triggering the eventually text commentary of "how did he miss that!" -- big difference though between a ~15-25% chance (Hummels header) and a ~40-50% one (Rashford miss against Belgium in the group stages).

[Weezer]

12 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Don't think the graph was compiled with a view to showing off England's set piece prowess though. Only reason for excluding them (and the Times giving it an inaccurate caption) was to artificially make them look bad. England also topped the "shots on target from set pieces" stat for the tournament at the beginning of the day, largely for the same reason: when they pushed for goals, most opponents sat deep, giving away plenty of fouls and finding crosses a lot easier to head out of play when facing Kane and two midgets than Kane and two centre backs (the exception obviously being Croatia who kept the ball pretty well for 50 mins after levelling).

You can tell how stupid the "shots from open play" stat is by how it implies today's 2-0 defeat was a more dominant attacking performance by England than eviscerating a useless Panama

 

I really don't see how 2 shots from open play (one of which deflected of the heel of a player that wasn't even aware of it) against probably the worst side to qualify for a World Cup that I can remember and 1 shot on target from open play in 3 knockout games means you can't fairly criticise England's play. You can still be happy that we made a semi-final and accept that there a glaring issues with our performances, it's not an either or.

Feels like the Sterling thing. Some people are unwilling to accept any criticism of him whatsoever when it's clear that he hindered us just as much as he helped us in this tournament. Not everything is black and white, there's grey in between and you can appreciate and criticise at the same time.

[enigmatic]

15 minutes ago, Weezer said:

I really don't see how 2 shots from open play (one of which deflected of the heel of a player that wasn't even aware of it) against probably the worst side to qualify for a World Cup that I can remember and 1 shot on target from open play in 3 knockout games means you can't fairly criticise England's play. You can still be happy that we made a semi-final and accept that there a glaring issues with our performances, it's not an either or.

Feels like the Sterling thing. Some people are unwilling to accept any criticism of him whatsoever when it's clear that he hindered us just as much as he helped us in this tournament. Not everything is black and white, there's grey in between and you can appreciate and criticise at the same time.

I've never said you can't fairly criticise England's play, and have posted a number of criticisms of England's play over the past couple of weeks. But the Times providing a graphic of  "shots on target" which excludes most of the shots on target (including nearly all the ones that actually went in), just because showing the actual (slightly more representative) statistic for shots on target on the tournament would put England's stats roughly on a level with Croatia and not far behind France rather than just above Iran isn't what I'd consider fair criticism.

I don't see how pretending an artificial metric which implies a side which scored six goals actually didn't create enough chances in that game is any closer to fair criticism than complaining about Sterling eating breakfast or buying his mum a house.

[Weezer]

7 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

I've never said you can't fairly criticise England's play, and have posted a number of criticisms of England's play over the past couple of weeks. But the Times providing a graphic of  "shots on target" which excludes most of the shots on target (including nearly all the ones that actually went in), just because showing the actual (slightly more representative) statistic for shots on target on the tournament would put England's stats roughly on a level with Croatia and not far behind France rather than just above Iran isn't what I'd consider fair criticism.

 I don't see how pretending an artificial metric which implies a side which scored six goals actually didn't create enough chances in that game is any closer to fair criticism than complaining about Sterling eating breakfast or buying his mum a house.

The accompanying article details that the graphic is for shots in open play. It is specifically focusing on the fact that in open play our chance creation is extremely lacking. I don't see what's not to get about that.

I don't care that the screenshot is misleading, which you seem to be focusing on, because I actually bothered to see what it was all about rather than reacting to the clickbait screenshot itself. Yes we did well from set pieces, but again that doesn't mean our chances from open play is irrelevant.

[enigmatic]

But selective small sample metrics so obviously misleading they imply yesterday was by far England's best performance and that Germany were one of the tournament's top performing teams are basically irrelevant without context. Makes no more sense as evidence we were "bad" in the tournament than the set pieces stats as evidence we were "the best", which would be an equally silly claim to make.

There was nothing bad about the fact Panama considered us sufficiently dangerous in open play to provide us with a constant stream of set pieces and two penalties without us ever needing to try more speculative efforts, and nothing good about us resorting to desperately throwing players forward against Belgium (something which unlike most of the other sides in the tournament we only had to do for eight minutes of the tournament proper). 

We could have easily managed more shots on target if we'd been less keen to keep the ball, but funnily enough we got knocked out in the game we couldn't stop giving it away....

[Weezer]

25 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

But selective small sample metrics so obviously misleading they imply yesterday was by far England's best performance and that Germany were one of the tournament's top performing teams are basically irrelevant without context. Makes no more sense as evidence we were "bad" in the tournament than the set pieces stats as evidence we were "the best", which would be an equally silly claim to make.

That's just it though, the statistic itself makes no implications about individual performances, and neither did I. You could do that sure, if you just wanted to write or believe a clickbait article, whereas I was just interested in highlighting the stat itself. It just brings to light a serious deficiency in our game that needs working on.

As for comparing the stats though personally I'd much rather they were the other way around. It would be much easier to work on and add proficiency at set pieces to a style that was already producing plenty of shots on target from open play. You can't rely on teams giving away cheap penalties and free kicks against you all the time.

[enigmatic]

Regardless of tactics, you're pretty much certain to get more chances from open play against sides that don't pack their penalty area in open play or shithouse you though, for the same reason you're less likely to win penalties and don't necessarily whip every free kick into the box in those games.

It'd be easy to conclude the deficiency was serious if half the teams topping that metric hadn't massively underachieved (and attempted more shots on target precisely because they spent far more time needing to score to survive) and if England hadn't done absolutely fine on the related more important metrics. 

[Marc Albrighton]

Its only just over the channel lads, it basically came home 

[Darren Moores Mum]

We all meant the Golden Boot, right?

[buffalo]

On 14/07/2018 at 19:14, daylight said:

I feel you guys could have if you hadn't beaten England the first time. 

Belgium are better than Croatia and I think they would've beaten France in the final.

France beat us in the semis instead of the final

no regrets whatsoever

we needed a win vs a team like Brazil to prove ourselves, to the fans as well as to the general public

also as a confidence boost for the squad: they did believe they could do it, but never produced when at the tournament, and wanted revenge for the Argentina and Wales matches on previous occasions

[craigcwwe]

1 hour ago, ginnybob said:

We all meant the Golden Boot, right?

Of course we did, imagine thinking we we're talking about that big gold thing, hahaha…..

[Barry Cartman]

https://news.sky.com/story/french-world-cup-party-scenes-of-joy-and-violence-11438407

Just scummy English fans iirc 

[Coulthard's Jaw]

Important to remember that a few lads running into a retail store and chanting ITS COMING HOME is the worst thing you can do as a football fan.

[forameuss]

2 hours ago, Barry Cartman said:

https://news.sky.com/story/french-world-cup-party-scenes-of-joy-and-violence-11438407

Just scummy English fans iirc 

Scummy England fans did it (and one Ambulance-dancing-Scot) and scummy French fans did it.  Or are we supposed to excuse them because there were worse scenes somewhere else?

[buffalo]

why aren't the riots coming home :/