England v Tunisia Match Thread

Tunisia were a disgrace. One of their players had the physio come on after being hit by the ball ffs, embarrassing. The ref was appalling, didn't stop them wasting time, gave a very dodgy penalty against England and missed two nailed on penalties against Kane. As noted above, he didn't stop them preventing a quick free kick once which is hugely frustrating.

England weren't good. Too ponderous, too sideways and no invention after the first 20 minutes. Lingard's finishing was horrendous and Rashford and Loftus-Cheek deserve to start the next game after Alli and Sterling were so ineffectual. Still, deserved the win because Tunisia were straight up cheats. No place in football for a team like that.

Kane apart, we have so little quality in the final third. It was embarrassing.

We had at least four great chances in the first half hour that players simply fluffed. Linguard was awful, Sterling abysmal. Neither player had a decent first touch. Just hopeless technique. We have seen better finishing than that in the Conference. Podge would have had a hat trick tonight with those gilt edged chances.

Do we really not have better players than Linguard and Sterling?

We will make it to the knock out stages but will be out the first time we come up against a half decent side. They say you can play your way into tournament, but you cant play your way into good technique,

Our players are simply not good enough at this level.

Quoted from mimma

How many more times do England have to suffer from poor refereeing decisions FFS!.

At least three times Kane was wrestled to the ground but nothing is done by either the ref or VAR assistant. The to compound the errors he gives a very very soft penalty to them..

Anyone else notice how the ref failed to stop the Tunisians from letting us take free kicks quickly by blatantly standing in front of the ball when free kicks were given? I thought that the refs were suppose to clamp down on this to let the game flow.

Yet again we get the @rse end of sh1t refereeing at the World Cup. It happens too many times to us to be coincidence.

Eurovision Song Contest springs to mind-everybody hates us.

Quoted from RonMariner

Kane apart, we have so little quality in the final third. It was embarrassing.

We had at least four great chances in the first half hour that players simply fluffed. Linguard was awful, Sterling abysmal. Neither player had a decent first touch. Just hopeless technique. We have seen better finishing than that in the Conference. Podge would have had a hat trick tonight with those gilt edged chances.

Do we really not have better players than Linguard and Sterling?

We will make it to the knock out stages but will be out the first time we come up against a half decent side. They say you can play your way into tournament, but you cant play your way into good technique,

Our players are simply not good enough at this level.

Do you genuinely think Ali and Lingard don’t have good technique based on what you’ve seen of them week in week out? I think your over reacting a fair bit tbh. Yes we were ponderous in the second half but at least we didn’t start lumping it in like we’ve done so often in the past. Kept our patience and got what we deserved against an awkward team and dubious ref. With the exception of Spain, Portugal and maybe Croatia none of the other teams have been any better than us. I think some people have too high expectations so will always be disappointed, we’re no world beaters so don’t expect to see world beating performances.

We are all moaning BUT, we have won our first game which is more than Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Germany and Portugal have done. VAR rescued France as opposed to tonight's game.

Up next is Panama, referees permitting, we win and we are through to the knockout stages. Meanwhile the Germans have a tough game against the Swedes to negotiate.

Typical England, the refereeing has been excellent up to tonight's game.

Yeah....we are all happy with the win now but........

That ref shouldn't be allowed near a football ground again.......denied us 2 clear cut penalties

Rose should replace Young, by far the better player.

Loftus cheek needs a chance as has never looked bad at all and Vardy in place of Sterling.

After a good nights sleep my thoughts are,

Terrible waste of chances in first 20 mins when we missed at least 3 good scoring chances,

We would be calling Town players if they missed those never mind international ones,

Poor ref but he was not helped by the VAR man so nothing new there then,

We deserved to win JUST  but was only playing a poor team,

I would like to see Rashford in for Sterling who offered very little,

We will get out the group stage but lose as soon as we play a decent team,

Good thing is there are not a lot of decent teams in at the moment,

They might improve so we will need to if we are to  have any chance of progressing.

Quoted from promotion plaice

Yeah....we are all happy with the win now but........

That ref shouldn't be allowed near a football ground again.......denied us 2 clear cut penalties

Don't blame the ref, it's the VAR to blame. Even if he did spot the incidents he may have been waiting for the call from the VAR boys.

Can't believe all the negative comments on here. I'm really not sure what people expect from this team. As far as I am aware nobody expected England to win this but this is a young squad, the youngest there, who played with more maturity then many of their much more renowned predecessors.

First 30 minutes we played some of the best stuff I'd seen from any team so far. Yes we squandered some very good chances and that will have to improve but the fact we created so many chances is a positive.

Tunisia pressed higher when we went a goal up and caused us a few problems but apart from Tunisia's penalty, I don't remember another threat on our goal in the entire match.

The 2nd half was different and there was no way we could continue with the same pace of the 1st half but this is were the maturity came into it. Previous England sides would have resorted to longer and longer balls, hopeful hoofs into the box but this side kept to their game plan.

England kept the ball, moved the opposition around and gradually wore them down without looking particularly dangerous. But then with the introductions of Rashford and Loftus-Cheek the tempo was picked up and England got their just deserts because Tunisia tired, allowing Kane to be unmarked to score.

Yes, there is room for improvement and no we aren't going to win it but, for me, that was a good performance against a Tunisia team who had some decent results in the build up including holding out against Spain for 84 minutes before losing 1-0.

It has become so fashionable to critcise England, people don't recognise a good performance when they see it.