(13-07-2021, 10:33)Devongone Wrote: I like Southgate as a man, but as a manager I'm not so sure. Why couldn't Rashford have come on for Sterling and have an actual run and a kick, he's a fckuin' wonderful player isn't he? Sancho is a player of astonishing skills, why was he reduced to last-minute dead ball kicker? Why couldn't Southgate, like Mancini, see what was happening & alter the pattern of play? The answer you'll eventually come to is that Gareth Southgate is an intelligent man, but he lacks that football shrewdness, that nous that made Mancini both as player and manager someone who could see how to change a game round, to influence what was happening. Nice Gareth hasn't got that and it can't be taught can it?

Had Southgate planned the penalties properly he'd have put his captain up first and the leader of his defence, Maguire, on last. Imagine the guts it took for 19 year old Bukayo Saka to agree to take the last penalty with the world watching and the game possibly hanging on it. He's one brave lad. If he couldn't play the game his biggest worry would be how he'd fit in with the posh kids at Oxford University next term. People should be celebrating him, not abusing him. The fearlessness of youth is largely a myth. You are fine so long as you aren't given pause for thought like Emma Raducanu at Wimbledon. If something goes wrong, or the whole thing stops and you are given time to consider the enormity of what you are being asked to do that fearlessness is no more than skin-deep.

And for all the criticism of Rashford (Including mine), he did get Donnaruma flopping like a beached whale towards the wrong corner before he scuffed his kick into the post. I don't agree with it as a method, and you can end up looking a xxxx or making the keeper look like one, but had he been given a few minutes of pitch time it would have worked and arguably given Sancho and Saka enough confidence to beat the big keeper too.

(15-07-2021, 12:34)Devongone Wrote: Assuming HibeeJim is right and England will probably have Southgate as manager for the rest of my sad and lonely days, the only option is to bring in assistants for those areas in which he is more than weak.

Yesterday in the Mail Clive Woodward suggested Matt Le Tissier as penalty coach. Yes yes yes, he spent hours honing his simple technique, in which he said there was only one thought in his head as he took the kick - go left or right - a decision he left until the very last second. I think he only ever missed one! So Matt can masterclass the whole squad on a regular basis, whaddya think?

And yes yes yes, Southgate needs a voice in his ear from a manager who wins things, who can see if his team set-up has stopped working ........ and knows what to do. At the moment he obviously DOES have a voice in his ear that HE trusts, unfortunately I think it must be telling him stuff he wants to hear.

Why we need to do this? Because I, for one, cannot possibly live long enough to see us have such a collection of potentially world-beating players available again. Now I wouldn't say these young lions are being led by a donkey, but is there anyone around who seriously thinks they are being led by a lion?