[hibeejim21]

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.

If Mancini had managed England on Sunday you would be champions. It's that simple. Mancini taught Southgate a lesson. Absolutely dicked all over him tactically.

Imagine your big moment, a squad full of talent and you decide to go to a low block 1-0 against Italy after 30 minutes.
What possible good did Southgate imagine would come of that?

I think he's an absolute imposter with "loser" written through him like a stick of rock, but he will likely get a 10 year deal from the FA now

[Lord Snooty]

You're sounding jealous now, Jim.

---

You sound like myself talking about that imposter Bielsa.

[Lord Snooty]

Anyway, great to see the players telling that moron in Downing Street to shove his reception up his arse.

[Devongone]

I don't think Gareth Southgate is an imposter. He isn't pretending to be something he isn't. In some ways I wish he was, but his approach to team selection and the game seems very much to reflect him as a man. Nice, safe, conservative.

The trouble is we tend to hype individuals to a point at which they are nothing like the comparisons being made for them. Before he managed England Alf Ramsey took Ipswich Town - IPSWICH FFS - to the old Division One title. He was a proven manager with real credentials. He was a winner. Now you can't say that about Gareth Southgate. He hasn't managed anybody to win anything significant. He's been a favourite at the FA, polishing up the knocker on the big brass door. He has some excellent qualities, seems popular with his players, they want to win for themselves and for him. But he can't do what Mancini can do, because he hasn't that kind of vision. You can look around the Football League and find managers who can turn games and teams round. They can spot what is wrong, what needs doing, who needs to come on, who should come off, all that kind of thing ........... most of the time. A Neil-Warnock character, who is never going to be in the running to be an international manager has those kind of skills and Gareth who sounds and looks a thousand times better, and is a nicer man, just doesn't.

Roy Hodgson, nice man, intelligent, trustworthy, interesting and a good reader of the game was a rarity. Nice doesn't seem to be a quality in evidence when you rise to the top of any trees in life. Roy in International Football made the Swiss better than they'd ever been, and taught England how to qualify for tournaments, but in the end even he failed.

[talkSAFT]

Maybe Southgate should give Warnock an Assistant role (?)

[Devongone]

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?

[WakeyTerrier]

You can bring in all the penalty coaches you like but nothing will prepare you for taking a penalty in major final and what would Le Tissier know about taking pens in anything major having never even played in a cup/play off/euro/world cup finals

Paul Merson summed it up nicely the other day when he said if a put a plank of wood on the floor and told you to walk along it you would do it no problem
Stick the same plank of wood 50ft up in the air and tell you to do the same and you find it a lot more difficult

[Lord Snooty]

Wasn't le Pissier one of those slagging the boys off for taking the knee?

[hibeejim21]

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?

They clearly aren't.

Southgate was clearly unable to implement any sort of attacking style or strategy. His process was all about fear of losing,With the players you have I'm not sure thats getting the full monty.

Remember other nations aren't going to just sit still before Qatar, Spain are very close to being a top side, Germany will have a new coach and have a number of very good young players, even Italy will likely get another tournament out of those CBs and have replaced one of the best goalkeepers ever with a very able young man who is only going to get better. Italy will also probably have Pellegrini and Zaniolo fit, and their excellent LB Spinnazola who got injured. France aren't going to be that careless again and then you have to add the South American nations to the mix.

What I'm saying is that i'm just not sure that England are any more than a solid quarter final type team under Southgate at the next WC. Southgate always seems to freeze at key moments. Like you say he needs a calm voice in his ear....I'd go for one from outside England.

[Devongone]

I kinda think scoring 48 out of 49 penalties in front of a crowd suggests Le Tissier might know more about taking penalties than a guy who took one and missed one in big-time competition.

Le Tissier suffered the same kind of problem with international selection that Jack Grealish has, too good, too unusual, too maverick, too left field.

I feel taking the knee whilst taking a penalty would be counter-productive. Matt Le Tissier was one of the boys abused by Southampton's youth coach who was thinking "perhaps this naked massage isn't right" ......... and he came through to be one of the best English footballers of my long lifetime. Penalty-taking is one of those things you need to feel right about. If you dither about you probably won't feel right when you reach the ball, if you always hop third step in, then fine that will feel right.

If we want our best players ever always to lose in big moments, keep doing what we're doing. You can't ever reproduce a World Cup Final on a training ground. You don't need to be Einstein to work that one out. But you can hone a technique so that you are as confident as you can be, that under pressure it and you will hold up. Jonny Wilkinson spent lonely hours hoofing a rugby ball through the posts, and when it came to the last kick of the World Cup with the whole world watching, he just did it again.

Paul Merson was wonderful to watch, but his guide to life skills would be entitled The Thinking Man's Gazza. I wouldn't enlist for any of his philosophy classes any time soon if I were you. When we are talking planks ....