by sussexpob » Wed May 23, 2018 4:12 pm
If we have learnt one lesson from the Iceland game, its that Joe Hart was kidnapped at some stage between 2010-14 and replaced with a lookalike droid that couldnt catch a cold. You could make a case in Euro 2016 that we pretty much dominated every single game in terms of possession, territory and likeliness to score, but while we could take chances up top with Kane having a stinker, Joe Hart basically let in everything that came his way, and you could make a convincing case for blaming his mistakes on all the goals we conceded. Hart wont be there, so we instantly can consider ourselves to have a better chance.
If anything though, England need to look at that Iceland game carefully and heed the biggest lesson to be learnt from it..... that being, when a team is clearly only interested in shoving 11 men in their final third, then the laboured nonsense passing game trying to play the ball inside does not work. I remember Rashford coming on for 5 minutes at the end, and it changed the game.... a dynamic winger willing to attack a full back and take him on.
England are most likely going to get one tough match vs a Belgian team with bags of talent, which they will do well to draw but may ironically favour England with Belgium having no world class full backs and being more keen to take the game to us. After that, I expect replays of the Algeria, Slovakia, Russia, Iceland, Wales and USA games from the last decade.... ie, teams that will sit back and only attack if they have conceded. Interestingly, once again, we only conceded goals in all of those games with keeping errors (Rob Green threw Dempsey's terrible shot in his own net, remember).
England have to be prepared to mix up the play. If a team are sat back then try to get the wide men to stretch the play a bit and run at them with some pace. If that doesnt work, then they need to be prepared to play Howitzer football. Time and time again you see teams so defensive against England their full backs retreat to areas either just inside the box, or within say 20 yards of their own goal line. If teams are going to play that tight, you need a moment of indiscipline and some quality on the deck to play through them. If that doesnt work then after 60-70 minutes, with so much space to cross in the box, you literally want to be working the ball into wide areas and having 5 central players attacking the crosses.
England never mix it up though. If a team wants to play one way and defend well, you have to be prepared to roll through a few different attacking fronts and make them defend different situations. Most international teams like Tunisia and Panama are not going to be teams who will cope with that well.
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And a hat and bra to you too, my good sirs!