Ukraine v England

Although Kanes ball to Walker was absolutely marvellous I would rather one of our midfielders was making them sort of passes, we have defensive midfielders, Rice and Henderson but are crying out for a Pirlo type, afraid although Madison was ok today he not making defence splitting passes.

Quoted from Gaffer58

Although Kanes ball to Walker was absolutely marvellous I would rather one of our midfielders was making them sort of passes, we have defensive midfielders, Rice and Henderson but are crying out for a Pirlo type, afraid although Madison was ok today he not making defence splitting passes.

Henderson makes too many poor decisions. I’d drop him for Foden. I know that might be too attack minded, but I think he can pull strings, whereas Henderson doesn’t provide any threat, and rice does all the dirty work anyway.

And I see North Macedonia got a late equaliser tonight against Italy - makes it even easier for us to qualify now.

People moan about our attack, but, we are the leading goalscorers in the competition.

There's far, far too much made about these qualifiers, which are glorified friendlies in all but name.

The best teams have always gone through these games on auto-pilot before very slowly building up pace in the actual tournaments.

That said though, some of Southgate's loyalty is tiresome to say the least.    I do get the need for a degree of some caution but I would love to see the reigns loosened a little bit and just letting his side express themselves a bit more.    There's some serious attacking talent in our ranks at the minute, to the point I think we've enough to just terrify teams into defeat.  But Southgate has this default of worrying about the opposition first.

It's a fair point that we're the leading scorers so far, but I think any apathy or disillusionment with Southgate comes down to the feeling of not being entertained.

Quoted from diehardmariner

There's far, far too much made about these qualifiers, which are glorified friendlies in all but name.

The best teams have always gone through these games on auto-pilot before very slowly building up pace in the actual tournaments.

That said though, some of Southgate's loyalty is tiresome to say the least.    I do get the need for a degree of some caution but I would love to see the reigns loosened a little bit and just letting his side express themselves a bit more.    There's some serious attacking talent in our ranks at the minute, to the point I think we've enough to just terrify teams into defeat.  But Southgate has this default of worrying about the opposition first.

It's a fair point that we're the leading scorers so far, but I think any apathy or disillusionment with Southgate comes down to the feeling of not being entertained.

I agree Southgate needs to introduce more fringe/youth so they get used to international football, sticking with your tried and tested comes a point where they wont be any good and you'll have no young players to easy slot in.

I must admit I tuned in to watch the game, but after 10 minutes of tippy tappy football between the defence and midfield, I turned it off.

Our midfield hasn't been a top level unit at any point that I can remember. We've often had some good players in the middle, but it has never been cohesive enough when we've faced the real top tier teams, though strengths in other areas have sometimes overcome this issue.

I'd say we've now got the players capable of being a top level unit (Bellingham, Rice, Foden), so it's up to Southgate to mould them into a proper unit. One issue could be with Bellingham, who looks to be capable of playing all the midfield roles under the sun, but has been started in a more advanced role at Real Madrid. I'm not sure we have the players to allow him to play a similar role for England, so he'll always be out of position to some degree if that's where he is going to regularly play for Madrid. This was always an issue when we tried to lever Gerrard and Lampard into the same midfield, though I think Bellingham has the portential to surpass the achievements of those two in the future.

Henderson has always been a grafter, but his race is surely run now he's decamped to Saudi. I think we need to look elsewhere, especially if we're going to start working on ways of operating a midfield which can help to unpick teams who defend against us solidly. Too slow, no creativity and ageing.

Much of the stick Southgate has been getting in the media at the moment is for selecting Maguire, but I don't think that's a problem at the moment as we know he's only in there due to injuries right now and he'll generally do a decent job for England. Keeping Henderson involved is much more of an issue for me. He's not playing in a high-level league any longer so his level is likely to deteriorate pretty rapidly as he enters his twilight years.

He's given caps to Bellingham, Gueh, Gallagher, Saka, Foden and a few more that I can't remember.
The problem with our young players is that they don't get enough game time at club level because of the insane number of players the Premier league teams have. The young untried players are frozen out.

As for saturday's game, I don't think you are giving enough credit to Ukraine who are highly motivated by events in their homeland.

Oh, and Italy in our group, could only managed a draw in North Macedonia

Quoted from Maringer

Our midfield hasn't been a top level unit at any point that I can remember. We've often had some good players in the middle, but it has never been cohesive enough when we've faced the real top tier teams, though strengths in other areas have sometimes overcome this issue.

I'd say we've now got the players capable of being a top level unit (Bellingham, Rice, Foden), so it's up to Southgate to mould them into a proper unit. One issue could be with Bellingham, who looks to be capable of playing all the midfield roles under the sun, but has been started in a more advanced role at Real Madrid. I'm not sure we have the players to allow him to play a similar role for England, so he'll always be out of position to some degree if that's where he is going to regularly play for Madrid. This was always an issue when we tried to lever Gerrard and Lampard into the same midfield, though I think Bellingham has the portential to surpass the achievements of those two in the future.

Henderson has always been a grafter, but his race is surely run now he's decamped to Saudi. I think we need to look elsewhere, especially if we're going to start working on ways of operating a midfield which can help to unpick teams who defend against us solidly. Too slow, no creativity and ageing.

Much of the stick Southgate has been getting in the media at the moment is for selecting Maguire, but I don't think that's a problem at the moment as we know he's only in there due to injuries right now and he'll generally do a decent job for England. Keeping Henderson involved is much more of an issue for me. He's not playing in a high-level league any longer so his level is likely to deteriorate pretty rapidly as he enters his twilight years.

Rice can very effectively be the holding midfield for England.  It might not be the best use of him but he's the best at doing that for England.  Equally so it would allow the likes of Bellingham and Foden to have that bit of freedom to express themselves further forward.   For me you want, of those 3, Bellingham and Foden as the two who are pressing further forward.  

The difference between Rice and Gerrard/Lampard even Scholes is that Rice is actually capable of picking up that less marauding type role.  None of Gerrard, Lampard or Scholes were good enough to do that, fantastic at what they did but not flexible enough to let others push on.  For the luxury of attacking talent he had in midfield, Sven didn't have the flexibility or quality of those players to do different roles.  What he should have done is have the balls to accept he couldn't play all 3 (4 if we're including Beckham) in a rigid 4-4-2.