[spireitetoo]

The Earl of Chesterfield, on 25 March 2025 - 06:27 PM, said:

Anyone believing we'd turn into the nineteen seventies Brazilians simply by replacing Southgate was living in ga-ga land.

These lower ranked nations will always stick a crowd behind the ball and hope for a cock-up/lucky break/sympathetic ref'.

Meaning anything like entertaining football is all but impossible.

Tuchel strikes me as pragmatic - all he's bothered about is winning the game. Forget keeping players happy, forget fancy-assed formations and forget long-term planning.

Here's a side to get the job done and that's that.

And if that get's him one place higher than his predecessor at the next tournament, nobody'll be complaining about how he did it...

What I dont get is, when we play these teams, you know what ya gunna get, like you say they will sit in, hope to hit on the break and nick a lucky goal, and tbf both Albania and Latvia did have those chances, so why do we play into their hands by playing tippy tappy football, playing everything infrint of their defence, trying to play between the very tight lines. I just don't get why we don't for teams like those, stick 3 upfront, forget nice football, launch it each and every chance into the box, cause some panic in their defence, by getting midfield runners following up for any knockdowns, and press them .. instead we had Rashford constantly receiving the ball out wide to turn it back inside 9 times outta 10, instead of taking on his defender, and when he did put in a terrible cross, you might as well just tell him to get in the box and launch it Wimbledon style..

[Goku]

spireitetoo, on 25 March 2025 - 09:22 PM, said:

What I dont get is, when we play these teams, you know what ya gunna get, like you say they will sit in, hope to hit on the break and nick a lucky goal, and tbf both Albania and Latvia did have those chances, so why do we play into their hands by playing tippy tappy football, playing everything infrint of their defence, trying to play between the very tight lines. I just don't get why we don't for teams like those, stick 3 upfront, forget nice football, launch it each and every chance into the box, cause some panic in their defence, by getting midfield runners following up for any knockdowns, and press them .. instead we had Rashford constantly receiving the ball out wide to turn it back inside 9 times outta 10, instead of taking on his defender, and when he did put in a terrible cross, you might as well just tell him to get in the box and launch it Wimbledon style..

What a crazy post

[h again]

Goku, on 25 March 2025 - 09:25 PM, said:

What a crazy post

l
No.he's dead right, but most people have been conditioned by the media to think it's the sophisticated way to play and anything else is just neanderthal tactics.Fashions change, the pendulum will swing back soon and we'll be back to fast attacking.
Football will get the excitement back - can't happen soon enough.

[Goku]

Mental

[sixmilliondollardan]

Even more mental as we won 3 nil. Launching it into a big man constantly was neanderthal football 40 years ago and no top team has ever played that way.

I'm convinced that some posters on here never watch any football other than Town, and every innovation in tactics is complete shock. 442, get it in the mixer!

[sophocles]

sixmilliondollardan, on 26 March 2025 - 12:48 AM, said:

Even more mental as we won 3 nil. Launching it into a big man constantly was neanderthal football 40 years ago and no top team has ever played that way.

I'm convinced that some posters on here never watch any football other than Town, and every innovation in tactics is complete shock. 442, get it in the mixer!

Well that's a classic example of crass over-simplification if ever I saw one. The match between N. Macedonia and Wales I watched on tv earlier on illustrates the point perfectly. Wales totally dominated the game for 90 minutes without scoring, then their continual sideways/back/sideways/back passing gifted Macedonia a goal in the 91st minute. Wales immediately pushed men up the pitch, and a few minutes later got the equaliser from a long ball thumped from about 60 yards into the opposition penalty area which was scrambled in by one of the players Wales had belatedly thrown forward. Maybe the point is that there is no single 'right' way to play, and you just need to employ the tactics that produce results, because the aim is not to put on an artistically pleasing exhibition, but to get a positive result.

[Goku]

Wanting us to play kick and rush football when the continual criticism of England from fans and pundits alike is that we never hold possession of the ball well enough (particularly in midfield) and struggle to dictate the tempo against decent teams is illogical. What you don’t do, in that case, is play kick and rush (a more tiring and physical brand of football) against small teams who you know you’re inevitably going to beat anyway. Getting the team used to ‘tippy tappy football’ will only benefit us by getting the players more used to retaining the ball in tight areas which should in theory benefit us against better teams in future when we have spells where we need to hold onto the ball. Remember international teams get barely any time together as it is to try and perfect a style of play.

What we would learn absolutely nothing from is playing 3 strikers, launching the ball forward continually and trying to feed off the scraps, because there is no way we would try and play that way against anybody who is actually any good, because that’s an easy way to continually surrender possession and make the game incredibly difficult for yourself. I challenge you to find a decent international team who does this; you won’t find one.

Honestly this is one of Bob’s Board’s most mental suggestions I’ve seen and it’s no surprise to see resident dinosaurs H Again and Sophocles supporting it, who I can assume are gutted that Tom Denton never got his well-deserved England call up. No wonder I look around me at town games thinking wtf are some of these people on about with what they’re shouting, they probably post on here. “Gerrit forrad t’forrad”.

Mental.

This post has been edited by Goku: 26 March 2025 - 06:29 AM

[ash_cfc]

Simon Jordan on Talksport summed it up perfectly yesterday. We aren’t going to judge TT in games against Albania & Latvia. Those games are just about getting the job done. We are going to judge TT in games against teams who think they can beat us. His in game management & playing on the front foot, which was something GS was woeful with.

[JonB]

Goku, on 26 March 2025 - 06:26 AM, said:

No wonder I look around me at town games thinking wtf are some of these people on about with what they’re shouting, they probably post on here. “Gerrit forrad t’forrad”.

That and the shouts of shoot when someone, normally a defender has the ball 40 yards out!

[sophocles]

Goku, on 26 March 2025 - 06:26 AM, said:

Wanting us to play kick and rush football when the continual criticism of England from fans and pundits alike is that we never hold possession of the ball well enough (particularly in midfield) and struggle to dictate the tempo against decent teams is illogical. What you don’t do, in that case, is play kick and rush (a more tiring and physical brand of football) against small teams who you know you’re inevitably going to beat anyway. Getting the team used to ‘tippy tappy football’ will only benefit us by getting the players more used to retaining the ball in tight areas which should in theory benefit us against better teams in future when we have spells where we need to hold onto the ball. Remember international teams get barely any time together as it is to try and perfect a style of play.

What we would learn absolutely nothing from is playing 3 strikers, launching the ball forward continually and trying to feed off the scraps, because there is no way we would try and play that way against anybody who is actually any good, because that’s an easy way to continually surrender possession and make the game incredibly difficult for yourself. I challenge you to find a decent international team who does this; you won’t find one.

Honestly this is one of Bob’s Board’s most mental suggestions I’ve seen and it’s no surprise to see resident dinosaurs H Again and Sophocles supporting it, who I can assume are gutted that Tom Denton never got his well-deserved England call up. No wonder I look around me at town games thinking wtf are some of these people on about with what they’re shouting, they probably post on here. “Gerrit forrad t’forrad”.

Mental.

It would help your 'argument/illogical rant' if you read and understood my post before replying. I'm saying that the most sensible approach is to be open to employing a range of differing tactics in different games and/or at different times within a game. Your insistence that there is one single 'good' style of play is clearly simplistic and ridiculous. I wonder if you saw the Wales v Macedonia game I referred to? After 90 minutes of short, non-incisive passing, a Welsh player provided the assist for Macedonia's goal with yet another backward pass which put their striker clean through to score, then Wales equalised within 4 minutes by throwing men forward and smashing a 60 yard ball up the pitch. Maybe you did see it and tut-tutted disapprovingly at the 'Neanderthal ' tactics they resorted to instead of feebly passing the ball between themselves in their own half until the final whistle went and gave their opponents all 3 points.

This post has been edited by sophocles: 26 March 2025 - 10:10 AM

[Goku]

sophocles, on 26 March 2025 - 10:09 AM, said:

It would help your 'argument/illogical rant' if you read and understood my post before replying. I'm saying that the most sensible approach is to be open to employing a range of differing tactics in different games and/or at different times within a game. Your insistence that there is one single 'good' style of play is clearly simplistic and ridiculous. I wonder if you saw the Wales v Macedonia game I referred to? After 90 minutes of short, non-incisive passing, a Welsh player provided the assist for Macedonia's goal with yet another backward pass which put their striker clean through to score, then Wales equalised within 4 minutes by throwing men forward and smashing a 60 yard ball up the pitch. Maybe you did see it and tut-tutted disapprovingly at the 'Neanderthal ' tactics they resorted to instead of feebly passing the ball between themselves in their own half until the final whistle went and gave their opponents all 3 points.

Yes sometimes hoofing it up works, sometimes long throws work, that's fine, it's obviously more of a desperate last resort for an international team full of high quality players. What did you make of Southgate's team's continual dull passing around the back, that must've frustrated you no end?

[Hoare (400)]

People get swallowed up by the word "Tactics" so lets be honest, nobody really cares as long as you put the ball in the net more times than your opponents, great if its pretty to watch, but at the end of the day the end products still the same.



Hoare (400)

[JonB]

sophocles, on 26 March 2025 - 10:09 AM, said:

It would help your 'argument/illogical rant' if you read and understood my post before replying. I'm saying that the most sensible approach is to be open to employing a range of differing tactics in different games and/or at different times within a game. Your insistence that there is one single 'good' style of play is clearly simplistic and ridiculous. I wonder if you saw the Wales v Macedonia game I referred to? After 90 minutes of short, non-incisive passing, a Welsh player provided the assist for Macedonia's goal with yet another backward pass which put their striker clean through to score, then Wales equalised within 4 minutes by throwing men forward and smashing a 60 yard ball up the pitch. Maybe you did see it and tut-tutted disapprovingly at the 'Neanderthal ' tactics they resorted to instead of feebly passing the ball between themselves in their own half until the final whistle went and gave their opponents all 3 points.

Out of interest of the strikers available to England who are we playing in this new thinking launch it style or are we going full old school and sticking Dan Burn up top to kick it at?

[sophocles]

JonB, on 26 March 2025 - 10:37 AM, said:

Out of interest of the strikers available to England who are we playing in this new thinking launch it style or are we going full old school and sticking Dan Burn up top to kick it at?

I'd prefer Tom Denton!

[sixmilliondollardan]

sophocles, on 26 March 2025 - 04:44 AM, said:

Well that's a classic example of crass over-simplification if ever I saw one. The match between N. Macedonia and Wales I watched on tv earlier on illustrates the point perfectly. Wales totally dominated the game for 90 minutes without scoring, then their continual sideways/back/sideways/back passing gifted Macedonia a goal in the 91st minute. Wales immediately pushed men up the pitch, and a few minutes later got the equaliser from a long ball thumped from about 60 yards into the opposition penalty area which was scrambled in by one of the players Wales had belatedly thrown forward. Maybe the point is that there is no single 'right' way to play, and you just need to employ the tactics that produce results, because the aim is not to put on an artistically pleasing exhibition, but to get a positive result.

There may not be a 'right' way to play, but launching it constantly and playing off a big man is limiting any ceiling you may have. No one is saying a long ball can't work but bread and butter should be an ability to keep the ball, the higher up you go the more important it becomes. It's not about being artistic, it's pragmatic.

Not sure Wales being useless is a sign everyone should start launching it. That's like saying passing it from the back is bad because Southampton are dire and they do it, but ignoring Man City and Liverpools success (two teams which ping it around at the back but do it differently, especially Liverpool undr Klopp which might be my ideal football to watch).

[sophocles]

I have to say I think the 'only tippy-tappy allowed' brigade are being a bit unfair on the Neanderthals. The trouble they had to go to, hunting and carving up dangerous wild animals, to get a bladder to kick around, was incredible. Then you have to think about the state of the pitches they had to play on at different stages in their evolution - tropical swamps, rock-hard deserts, pitches covered in 40 feet of ice and snow! Be fair, is it any wonder they booted it up in the air?

[h again]

Goku, on 26 March 2025 - 06:26 AM, said:

Wanting us to play kick and rush football when the continual criticism of England from fans and pundits alike is that we never hold possession of the ball well enough (particularly in midfield) and struggle to dictate the tempo against decent teams is illogical. What you don’t do, in that case, is play kick and rush (a more tiring and physical brand of football) against small teams who you know you’re inevitably going to beat anyway. Getting the team used to ‘tippy tappy football’ will only benefit us by getting the players more used to retaining the ball in tight areas which should in theory benefit us against better teams in future when we have spells where we need to hold onto the ball. Remember international teams get barely any time together as it is to try and perfect a style of play.

What we would learn absolutely nothing from is playing 3 strikers, launching the ball forward continually and trying to feed off the scraps, because there is no way we would try and play that way against anybody who is actually any good, because that’s an easy way to continually surrender possession and make the game incredibly difficult for yourself. I challenge you to find a decent international team who does this; you won’t find one.

Honestly this is one of Bob’s Board’s most mental suggestions I’ve seen and it’s no surprise to see resident dinosaurs H Again and Sophocles supporting it, who I can assume are gutted that Tom Denton never got his well-deserved England call up. No wonder I look around me at town games thinking wtf are some of these people on about with what they’re shouting, they probably post on here. “Gerrit forrad t’forrad”.

Mental.

You seem to be obsessed with mental illness amongst people who disagree with you - a sure sign of your own inability to make a case.
Playing boring and negative football against teams that can be politely described as limited is the not entertainment, which is what football should be about but has been forgotten in the rush by media pundits to show how clever they are. Kick and rush has nothing to do with the case - you're setting up your own fevered imaginings just to knock them down - faster attacking football is all I'm advocating, and if we can't practice it against the sitting ducks we've seen lately, then we'll never produce it when it matters. I suspect Tuchel appreciates this, Southgate never did.

[sixmilliondollardan]

h again, on 26 March 2025 - 07:58 PM, said:

You seem to be obsessed with mental illness amongst people who disagree with you - a sure sign of your own inability to make a case.
Playing boring and negative football against teams that can be politely described as limited is the not entertainment, which is what football should be about but has been forgotten in the rush by media pundits to show how clever they are. Kick and rush has nothing to do with the case - you're setting up your own fevered imaginings just to knock them down - faster attacking football is all I'm advocating, and if we can't practice it against the sitting ducks we've seen lately, then we'll never produce it when it matters. I suspect Tuchel appreciates this, Southgate never did.

Not sure Goku's imaginings are that feverish, you described someone who said 'I just don't get why we don't for teams like those, stick 3 upfront, forget nice football, launch it each and every chance into the box' as 'dead right.'

[Goku]

h again, on 26 March 2025 - 07:58 PM, said:

You seem to be obsessed with mental illness amongst people who disagree with you - a sure sign of your own inability to make a case.
Playing boring and negative football against teams that can be politely described as limited is the not entertainment, which is what football should be about but has been forgotten in the rush by media pundits to show how clever they are. Kick and rush has nothing to do with the case - you're setting up your own fevered imaginings just to knock them down - faster attacking football is all I'm advocating, and if we can't practice it against the sitting ducks we've seen lately, then we'll never produce it when it matters. I suspect Tuchel appreciates this, Southgate never did.

Saying something is mental isn’t me being obsessed with mental illness, what on earth? It’s a common phrase used to criticise silly suggestions. I’ve literally made my case, it’s there in black and white. Have you finally gone senile?

The football we played was not negative, we had >75% possession almost all in Lativas half in the last match. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it negative.

“Fevered imaginings” look at the post I replied to which you then described as “dead right”. Can you even follow a few posts in a row without getting confused? You clearly don’t understand international football (don’t worry, you’re not alone in that), these qualifiers against weaker teams are gruelling grindfests which inevitably happen when said weaker teams set up in a low block with everyone behind the ball, they are hard to make exciting, you’ve just got to get through them, we scored 5 goals, realistically could’ve scored 8 or 9 were it not for a couple of very good saves/blocks and a crossbar hit. Going off your “dead right” reply I logically thought you wanted spireitetoo’s approach of putting all our strikers on the pitch, lumping it up to them and feeding off the scraps - a MENTAL tactic to suggest in international football playing against a minnow for reasons previously explained.

Must do better. D-

[Phil V 72]

Also worth saying that most of the England players are coached to play this way from an early age, so focussing on possession and ball retention is second nature to them. It’s a bit of a trend in current football to keep hold of the ball for long periods.

I was struck by this watching City play Real Madrid - City were slow, ponderous, took dozens of passes to reach a crossing position, whereas Real were fast, incisive and got into the same attacking positions as city within 1 or 2 passes. However, Real don’t play long balls, they just move the ball quicker with skilful players.

As a result of this trend (could it be called Pep-ball?) your old fashioned No9’s are quite rare so as mentioned earlier, I don’t know if you could switch styles to that extent. It would be good to see a Real-style England team but Bellingham & Saka aside, do we have the players to move the ball like this?

On the whole, perfectly satisfied with the first 2 games. These Qualifiers are basically a 15 month trial for players to earn a squad place for next summer. I expect we’ll see a lot of players in the qualifying games as Tuchel runs the rule over them - who’s good enough, and who isn’t