Southgate - time to admit this place was wrong?



For a few brief flashes last night England looked like a real football team. The sort that plays the game in the way that makes people fall in love with the game itself and not just with their favoured team but the actual game itself. The sort of football that every player, coach, manager, fan, owner aspires too until pragmatism breaks through.
Brazil in 1970and the Dutch team of the mid 70s did it for my generation.........imagine these young England kids getting that good! Awwwwh man!
The Czechs were as poor as I’ve ever seen them tbh though. You can see why both them and the Slovaks have asked permission from UEFA to reunite their auld league.
 
Royal Bassett Mackem said:
Personally eating humble pie on this one - was not happy with the choice but he’s been absolutely brilliant! Here’s hoping some silverware comes our way in the next few months, or years!
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could be a similar scenario to OGS : a player favourite managing to lift the gloom after a series of failing egomaniacs turned it all to shite
 
chunkylover53 said:
widely assumed to be a yes man who wouldn’t take tough decisions

- dropped Rooney, now retired
- dropped Hart (finally)
- dropped Wilshere
- dropped Cahill temporarily, instead looking at players from Leicester, Swansea and Burnley
- went to 3 at the back, and actually bothered to look at other options (like Walker in a 3)
- dropped Alli from the side when he was playing like a twat
- qualified easily, albeit from a piss poor group, with 7 wins and 2 draws from 9

Obviously we’re not gonna win the World Cup, we don’t have the players. But he’s done a much better job than most expected?
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The last World Cup was the first time in over a decade I found myself actually giving a shit about England. In terms of his overall team selection, he’s actually made bolder decisions than pretty much every England manager in my lifetime. And I mean, up until a few years ago the media may as well have picked the team. It’s actually quite refreshing that he doesn’t have the same reliance on players from ‘fashionable’ clubs or the so called big 4, and that ‘big names’ aren’t automatic selections. But at the same time, he’s willing to back players and have confidence in them. He’s a breath of fresh air, to be honest.
 
It was too much too soon when Southgate was appointed Boro manager, but I'm so pleased he's doing well with England. We were a joy to watch again last night.

What impresses me most is how a player has to fit into his system. Back in the days of the "Golden Generation" players were shoehorned into the side, it was literally a case of try and get as many of your top players into the team and hope for the best, and it would have been easy to have started Rashford wide left last night, but he's been doing well plaing up front for United, and Southgate decided he only wanted to go with one striker and couldn't find a place for him. I find that really refreshing.

Great to see the young lad Sancho given a chance as well and he took it.
 
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Teesside_Steve said:
It was too much too soon when Southgate was appointed Boro manager, but I'm so pleased he's doing well with England. We were a joy to watch again last night.

What impresses me most is how a player has to fit into his system. Back in the days of the "Golden Generation" players were shoehorned into the side, it was literally a case of try and get as many of your top players into the team and hope for the best, and it would have been easy to have started Rashford wide left last night, but he's been doing well plaing up front for United, and Southgate decided he only wanted to go with one striker and couldn't find a place for him. I find that really refreshing.

Great to see the young lad Sancho given a chance as well and he took it.
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Rashford was injured and not in squad like.
 
Teesside_Steve said:
It was too much too soon when Southgate was appointed Boro manager, but I'm so pleased he's doing well with England. watch again last night.
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I actually don't think Southgate was as bad as is being 'remembered' when he was Boro manager.
In his first 2 seasons in charge, we finished 12th and 13th in the premier league , having finished 14th in Steve McClarens last season.
It only started to go wrong (imo) when he became under pressure to balance the books and sell players.
He also lead the team to 3 consecutive FA Cup quarter finals.

I also reckon that he wasn't given time to mount a serious promotion challenge after we'd been relegated.
We'll never know now, but I often wonder if we'd have spent as long out of the premier league (which we've never really recovered from) , if Southgate had been given the chance to rebuild the team his way.
 
Teesside_Steve said:
It was too much too soon when Southgate was appointed Boro manager, but I'm so pleased he's doing well with England. We were a joy to watch again last night.

What impresses me most is how a player has to fit into his system. Back in the days of the "Golden Generation" players were shoehorned into the side, it was literally a case of try and get as many of your top players into the team and hope for the best, and it would have been easy to have started Rashford wide left last night, but he's been doing well plaing up front for United, and Southgate decided he only wanted to go with one striker and couldn't find a place for him. I find that really refreshing.

Great to see the young lad Sancho given a chance as well and he took it.
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I always thought he was a bit hard done by at Boro. But I’m only going by the position you lot were in when he was sacked.

I agree with you about previous England managers trying to shoehorn all of the ‘top’ players into a system. The ultimate example of that being Lampard and Gerrard, both were obviously cracking players and in their own right deserved to play, but it was impossible to have a system where the two could play together and be as effective as they were at club level, and this kind of shoehorning was ironically, only ever detrimental to the side on a whole. Moving away from that kind of mindset, which was backed up by an insistent media, is actually by far Southgate’s biggest achievement and definitely something that will benefit the national team, even after he’s left the job.
 

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