I have edited out my mistake… Just dropped it in to see who was paying attention :0)
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Southgate basically saying that Trent isn’t as good as Calvin Phillips 
.
Also that they’re experimenting. Wtf was the point in all the international breaks and pre-euro friendlies??
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You are presuming Southgate has a clue, thats where you are going wrong pal
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Yeah, exactly. We had to put up with all the disruption, the injuries, the fatigue of those bloody international breaks and now you start experimenting in the actual tournament?
Just fuck off Southgate!
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There is an old idea that sometimes teams need to find themselves during a tournament. In 86 Bobby Robson went into the tournament with a team based around a midfield of Wilkins and Robson. After losing the first group game, they limped through the second while losing Butch to a red card and Robson to a tournament ending injury within 5 minutes of each other. From them on Robson had to come up with something different and it clicked immediately. England then progressed impressively through to the QFs with a team Robson would never have planned on playing.
The problem is players of today are not as tactically intuitive as the top players of the 80s were. You hear the way Souness talks about his experiences and it was pretty much all based on him having the licence to do what he felt he needed to do based on the way the game was going. The way the game is played at club level now means they have more or less had that coached out of them and so they need a clear plan to execute, and they need to have it drilled into them to execute it properly. A good team can go into a tournament with a question or two still to answer on the margins, but for Southgate to go into his first game with the axis of the team being one he’d never played together before is pretty much malpractice. That cannot be put on trent even if he has struggled to have an impact from his “new role”
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When there was a sniff of a chance that Southgate might go to Man Utd, we were all hoping, fingers crossed. There might have just been enough of a little Englander in Ratcliffe that he would do it. Go on Jim, you know it makes sense!
But alas, after 5 mins at the Euros, the wider footballing public is starting to see what we’ve known all along. Southgate is crap.
Nice bloke, thoughtful, conscientious, no trouble… but crap at the old footy management.
Whatever England manage to do at the tourney, it will be despite Southgate, and whoever the heck it is that is supposed to be helping him.
Which is to say England might even stumble along and go quite far, as the actual collection of players is one of the best at the tourney. But the collective will definitely be less than the sum of its parts.
From afar these days, but the British media and wider footballing public do not have much perspective when it comes to England. 4 points from 2 games, nailed on to advance easily. Yes, playing shite, but what do people expect? This is England! The last time I remember them playing well was Euro 96. I was caught up in that one. And that brings me to a thought on the type of manager England should go for when Southgate hangs up his spurs after heroically getting to the QF/SF in Germany.
We need a charismatic head coach/manager, a leader of men, someone with flair.
One sort of coach would have lots and lots of time with the players, and they would coach everyone down to the finest margins, continually finding modest gains over the long haul. This sort of coach would do very well at club football. They have a vision, and all the time in the world, relatively speaking, to work on it.
Southgate can’t do this at a high level, btw, as he is a Championship level coach. And neither can he do this next approach, which I think is what England need to go for.
I’d like to see someone come in who knows how to set a team up and can do it quickly. They will be a great communicator and man manager, helping the players feel 10ft tall. They will set up the team with the right balance between defence and attack, and send them out to make their mark.
In some ways it would be a throwback sort of a manager, like when England had a nice tourney under Venables. But I honestly think this is the way forward for the England team. They are stocked with upper Prem level pros, for the most part. We know they can play, and in their normal football jobs, at the club level, they are coached down to the nth degree.
The England set up cannot duplicate that, and it should stop trying to.
Instead, get a larger than life figure in to set them up, pull the group together, and send them out full of confidence.
My choice? Don’t laugh…
Jose Mourinho.
He has done the lot. And his personality, if he has enough time with you, is such that there will definitely be a fallout. But in the England set up he won’t have time with them! He is very good at first impressions, personable and funny if he wants to be. And he can set up a team.
Mourinho, or that type. It’s the way forward for England.
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I know, a radical shout. And I wouldn’t want Mourinho anywhere near LFC.
I just think England need a big character at the helm, with a good eye to set up the team in the limited time international football gives a coach with the team, and send them out with confidence.
Southgate-ball is timid fare, the coaching looks bad, the set up looks bad, and the team underperforms.
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As an oIrish born Stray Alien, I could get behind this! Could even see Mourinho being keen, although the FA might be too timid and prefer a ‘safer’ option like Eddie Howe.
Eddie Howe will be a good call as Coach. Any Coach should be having a wealth of experience managing at the highest club level.
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Southgate is crap, but that doesn’t mean you replace him with a nasty, snide, cheating, repugnant slimeball.
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I hear you. I’m probably giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he won’t have enough time with them to burn the house down, relationally.
His short shelf life at clubs might be extended as an international manager, where he is effectively semi retired, but then enjoying the spotlight of doing well come tournament time. That could appeal to the ego.
Anyhow, I’m not wed to Mourinho, necessarily, more the idea of a manager who has been at the top level, who can set up a team of players who are already good - just needs to find the blend, and send them out with confidence.
I don’t care about England at all and I’d be happy if Trent never plays another international and puts all his energy into LFC. He’d probably go off to RM or something to try to prove a point though. Any news on those rumours?
I dunno, but with only a year left on his deal it is vulnerable. He is pally with Bellingham and there’s a sense in which an era has drawn to a close, as Klopp - a real father figure to Trent, in addition to being such a good manager - has departed.
I wonder if the stars might align for Rodrygo, if Trent is going there?
If he doesn’t sign a new deal we need to switch gears and work on getting what we can, as life moves on.
I will be happy if he signs a new deal though, as he is a great player. Like all reds, I’m watching closely with interest.
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Maybe clutching at straws, but I can’t imagine him thriving there. He’s a very special player with a unique skill set who needs understanding and support from the club he’s at. It’s hard to see him getting that at a place like Real.
Southgate is turning TAA into a bit of a laughing stock and allowing the vultures in the punditry to tear him to shreds - This might have a knock-on effect that we have to cope with next season.
For his own good, Trent needs to kick up a bit himself about cementing a position he can call his own - otherwise, he may start to drift away from his potential as a superstar in the next few years, to one of an average Joe…
If he played for Real they’d stick him RB and the fans would celebrate him not just as the best in the world, but as someone carrying on the Madrid tradition of game breaking FBs like Carlos and Marcello.
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Confirmed that Trent doesn’t start tonight.
Good. Gives him more rest.
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Southgate is a fucking joke.
Turns up at a major tournament with a new system they haven’t played before, with Trent in midfield but absolutely no-one to pass to, moans about missing Calvin fucking Phillips, then throws Trent under the bus despite him having the best stats of anyone else in midfield that in the Denmark game.
Idiot.
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