UEFA Euro 2020 Group D ** spoilers ** (England, Croatia, Scotland, C.Republic)

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arctine said:
Well I can’t read his mind but there’s a few obvious reasons.

Firstly Trippier was the only English player on the pitch who plays in La Liga. He is familiar with playing against more than one of the Croatian team at club level, not least of all Modric.

What a lot of people fail to take into account when assessing who plays which position is the person behind the footballer. Trippier knows the best of the opposition, has just won La Liga with AM after starting every game, was named most creative player of the tournament, has crucial experience in big international tournaments, has played against Croatia before and is a pretty decent LB even though it’s not his normal role.

Yes there are better LBs available but they don’t suit how England was set up today and they lack everything just mentioned.


You have to set up against the team you’re playing which means there will be no set starting 11. That means your favourite players might get benched and if you don’t understand football it is probably going to bemuse you.
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He didnt start every game.
 
ChroniC said:
That's the problem though, and anyone who speaks up about it gets derided as being pessimistic and moaning. We play average and met a side that was slightly less average. Both sides would suffer against a good team.
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This. We didn't play well and create/score bags of goals. We didn't really "dominate" anything. It was a fairly typical England performance, with a good first opening act.

And yet the pundits are all raving about how good this England teams is.

What I've concluded is that the performance doesn't really matter. Pundits just react to the scoreline.

Imagine in the dying minutes Croatia had equalised. It would be the same performance, but a different scoreline. Now the pundits aren't raving about how good England are, and they might allow themselves to be a bit critical of some of the performance.

But because the scoreline is 1-0, objectivity gets thrown out the window, and they play to the audience who think "winning is all that matters." If England done improve, they won't be winning very much. As soon as they come up against a genuinely impressive team - like in the knock-out phases - they'll lose.

So no, winning isn't all that matters. Performance matters. Perform like we did today against France and we'd lose 4-0 or something.
 
omnomnom said:
He didnt start every game.
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Yeah well if you do not understand football it is going to bemuse you. ;)

Trippier starting is pure Southgate loyalty rather than picking on form or some super tactical genius. He was non existent in the game. Especially for me watching Luke Shaw up that side pretty much all season. I also cannot understand Keane's and Neville's praise as we were bang average.
 
I fell asleep in the first half, after about 15 minutes. Apparently I messed the best bit. Philips had a decent game. I'd rather Man U looked at him ahead of Rice. Rice has never particularly impressed me and he seemed anonymous today. A win is a win but England were never not going to get out of the group so its all a bit academic. However they didn't look that great a side and I think they'll struggle against the better teams.
 
arctine said:
Yup.

Whereas saying the only goal scorer was complete rubbish?
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He wasted plenty of chances. Wasn't this also his first tournament goal in 13 games or something? If he stops wasting 9/10 chances and grabs another few goals in this tournament, then maybe people won't criticise him so much :p
 
arctine said:
I find it hilarious that people are finding things to complain about. We controlled the game and won against a good side.

We dictated the pace of the game and had the best chances. Creativity and defence were balanced and that’s how you win tournaments. You don’t win by being fun to watch.
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It's hard to judge how good they were, they could be worse than they were in 2018 and even back then they were in the easy half of pyramid along with us where both teams got soundly beaten in the final and 3rd place play-off.

If Croatia finish second in the group they may well get further in the tournament than us because the draw will be more favourable.
 
arctine said:
Well I can’t read his mind but there’s a few obvious reasons.

Firstly Trippier was the only English player on the pitch who plays in La Liga. He is familiar with playing against more than one of the Croatian team at club level, not least of all Modric.

What a lot of people fail to take into account when assessing who plays which position is the person behind the footballer. Trippier knows the best of the opposition, has just won La Liga with AM after starting every game, was named most creative player of the tournament at the world cup, has crucial experience in big international tournaments, has played against Croatia before and is a pretty decent LB even though it’s not his normal role.

Yes there are better LBs available but they don’t suit how England was set up today and they lack everything just mentioned.


You have to set up against the team you’re playing which means there will be no set starting 11. That means your favourite players might get benched and if you don’t understand football it is probably going to bemuse you.
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Because two of the Croatian team play in La Liga, one of them being Trippier's own team mate, he know more about the team than anyone else does he? :rolleyes:

Athletico played Madrid twice this season, guess what? so did Chelsea and Liverpool.

I like Trippier, he should have dropped Walker and play Trippier in RB with Shaw in
 
FoxEye said:
This. We didn't play well and create/score bags of goals. We didn't really "dominate" anything. It was a fairly typical England performance, with a good first opening act.

And yet the pundits are all raving about how good this England teams is.

What I've concluded is that the performance doesn't really matter. Pundits just react to the scoreline.

Imagine in the dying minutes Croatia had equalised. It would be the same performance, but a different scoreline. Now the pundits aren't raving about how good England are, and they might allow themselves to be a bit critical of some of the performance.

But because the scoreline is 1-0, objectivity gets thrown out the window, and they play to the audience who think "winning is all that matters." If England done improve, they won't be winning very much. As soon as they come up against a genuinely impressive team - like in the knock-out phases - they'll lose.

So no, winning isn't all that matters. Performance matters. Perform like we did today against France and we'd lose 4-0 or something.
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Yeah, i was surprised how much the ex-pros were raving about the performance, Croatia are nowhere near their 2018 level. Average at best, but 3 pts massive from 1st game.
 
What terrible logic. Trippier was not marking Modric or another defender (his team mate). Your statement sounds good but has zero substance.

As for being the most creative player, how is he going to be creative from LB. The answer is he wasn't and almost made a terrible error passing back to Pickford today, who saved him. How many times did he successfully get forward?
 
My take is we didn’t set the world on fire but it felt pretty comfortable, at no point was I nervous and biting my nails.

I reckon Sterling could score a hatrick and he’d still get slated on here. Yes, I wanted Grealish to start but I thought Sterling did well and was probably our second best player. Fluffed a couple of chances, but he gets in positions to have chances, what did Kane do other that trot around the pitch?
 
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