InigoPatinkin

Any doubts anyone had about Southgate should be gone now Rod Liddle has spoken

No need to try and explain yourself further, I read what you said! We played our best game away and we were forced to play the rest of the games at home! You're right, we were robbed.

So what you're saying is England were unfairly disadvantaged by having to play under the pressure of having all their games at home? I knew we were robbed. Bet the Italians rigged the draw too.

No, but that's kind of the point I suppose. Foden and Mount probably would make the midfield more fluid but any midfield 3 with those two in would be absolutely and ruthlessly picked apart by any team good at transitions. I don't think any half decent national team plays with 2 8's for this reason. You need two deep midfielder players and England just don't have any of those that are all that good at passing out from the back. If they did they'd be straight in the team. England would be much better off trying to play to their strengths, we've got several very good attacking midfielders who can play in the half spaces well. Use the solid midfield 2 to allow them to link up inside and let the fullbacks provide the width. If another Carrick comes along any time soon then you can adjust things, but we've got a defensively stable base with two progressive defenders and a whole battery of fullbacks who are proficient going forward. It's probably our biggest asset. Playing a slightly negative midfield two to keep that solidity and then tinkering with the attackers seems to me a much more likely to succeed strategy than playing players who aren't really proper midfielders in midfield end stopping the back line doing what they've been doing. Probably all the more important if TAA is back being a defacto playmaker from the wide areas.

Given it's gotten us to a semi-final and a final, probably yes, unless an obvious solution presents itself. International football is absolutely the worst place to try and play open, flowing football.

Gunman we all know your two favourite things in the world are telling other fans they aren't upset enough about how **** their club/country played and hating Juventus, in that order. Like I said it's harmless stuff but come on... at least own it!

We both know why you're doing it Gunman, you don't need to try and kid me nothing wrong with a bit of schadenfreude and if people aren't as upset as you think they should be? Well you'll just tell them they should be more upset! I don't mind it, it's usually in good spirits even if you do have a tendency to be more dramatic than is healthy people should just accept it for what it is.

No, that's not why I think Gunman is on a windup

The only issue I have with it is that the biggest culprits aren't actually English. I've barely seen any England supporters blaming anyone, even the manager. The majority of it has been "well, it was a great tournament, could have handled the final better but overall positive". Gunman has been the only one to really try to blame people and he's obviously not being genuine about it, he's just having a WUM.

Most certainly, I just don't like that that point is being conflated with their chance of penalty success. They should have been on earlier because they're good players and England should have tried to stretch Italy more. I see very little evidence that it would have made a meaningful difference to the outcome of their penalties other than some post-hoc justification because they missed.

No he wasn't, but he was clearly brought on with them in mind and not for any attempt to alter the match in normal time (other than maybe to waste some time).

It's worth pointing out Florenzi was brought on for the same reason with 2 minutes left of the game. Its the nature of tournament football. People look too hard for excuses. Rashford and Sancho didn't miss because they were undercooked, they missed because taking penalties in shootouts is hard. Saka missed and he'd played for a big chunk of the game.

This is a proper crazy take, am I missing something or is this real?

He's extremely good at them, it's not easy to send a goalkeeper as good as Donnaruma the wrong way. Just a shame the shot was shanked.

Jorginho was probably saved by it not being at forceful as it might have been. One of those definite 'orange' ones that goes either way. The Chiellini one is like you say, excessive, which makes it a red but the rules. Its one of those where it turned out harmless so he got away with it, but I think you have to put that one down to poor refereeing rather than' experienced' defending. I know lots of defenders who caught out in that position would have just held on to his shirt until the ball outran him and took the yellow without giving the referee a chance to send him off. The over the top yank back was stupidity.