Maximus Decimus
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Posts posted by Maximus Decimus
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2 hours ago, Tommygilf said:
I get that with those statistics, but I always take it with a pinch of salt.
Nobody on our side of the draw is particularly amazing, nor are they invulnerable. The fact that the other group winners on our side of the draw are Romania and Austria is a major boon. Italy, the Swiss and the Dutch are all of a level too.
I still think England are set up to "not lose" as we always have been under Southgate. That gets us fairly far, but ultimately I think it needs something else to get us over the line.
Yep. My gut is that Southgate still isn't going to change much, probably only Mainoo for Gallagher. The positives from the end of the last game will be seen as options from the subs bench.
I wonder if he thinks things have even been that bad. He might have convinced himself that it's like 2020 and we'll improve with each round.
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5 hours ago, Tommygilf said:
England Route to the final:
Slovakia then
Italy/Switzerland
Then a semi final against Netherlands/Romania or Austria/Turkey
Can't deny the opportunity is there to be taken.
It certainly is, but I think most people over-estimate how likely something like this is. They look at the teams and think England on paper are better than them all, but fail to realise how statistically likely or unlikely things are.
I was essentially the same until the 2018 World Cup, when fivethirtyeight.com demonstrated the probabilities of winning. Even though England were on the easier side of the draw, I was shocked to find that our chance of making a final was in the 20%s. The reasons are simple. Even if you have a 75% chance of winning each game (extremely high in a game like football), that soon adds up to become only 42% by 3 games.
There's a very similar thing on Optajoe now and England are again favourites, because of the draw that we have. However, we are only at 20% to win and 55% to reach the semi-finals. This essentially means statistically we have an almost 1 in 2 chance of not being in the Semi-Final. This would be seen as abject failure, yet in reality it's a very likely scenario.
Similarly, most people would be shocked to find that France only have a 13% chance of winning the tournament. Had they topped the group and got on our side, they would be favourites.
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Whilst Slovakia is a good draw, we need to improve. They're very similar to who we've played against and struggled with.
We could easily end up with another frustrating night where we get dragged to pens, or worse countered and unable to score.
It's crucial we start scoring and probably early, or the Southgate era could end like where it started from.
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Much will be made of the lucky draw and rightly so, but Southgate's England hasn't always had it like some will assert.
In 2018, we indisputedly had a lucky draw. In 2020, it was good but not great. The reward for winning the group was Germany in the 2nd round. Regardless of how they were underperforming, when you consider the baggage of Germany, that was a tough game. After that it was pretty good.
2022 wasn't a good draw. The reward for winning the group, and a comfortable 2nd round victory was the current World Champions. Hardly lucky.
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13 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
England v Slovakia.
The time for excuses has passed.
Sideways or backwards in England's case.
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A country smaller than Scotland and they were awesome.
It might not win a tournament, but the way some of the smaller teams play is what fans of Scotland and even England would love.
If (and it's still a big if) we end up in the latter stages of this tournament, we'll owe a lot to Georgia.
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This ref is having none of Portugal's antics!
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2 minutes ago, HawkMan said:
Sticking with Czechia game for now, they showed Georgia goal , so while there's double jeopardy here, I'll stick with it. If Czechia score Turkey are out if Georgia win. Re- assess at half time.
Been more excitement so far than the last two sets of groups!
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1 minute ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:
Right, we've already switched over!
Haha me too!
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So it's now simple.
If Czechia or Georgia win, we play Slovakia.
If neither win (or Czechia win by 3+) we play the Netherlands.
Georgia are winning...
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2 minutes ago, HawkMan said:
Okay decision time again, what to watch?
Portugal are through as group winners, it's unlikely Georgia will win, so I'll start with Czechia and Turkey. If I hear Georgia are winning I'll switch over.
Yeh Czechia-Turkey it is in my house.
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2 hours ago, gingerjon said:
16 really is too small for the Euros now though - and 32 would make it just a little bit ridiculous.
There must be something better format-wise but football would be unlikely to ever move from having standard groups of 4.
I know, I'd love to see a 20 team tournament where each teams plays 4 times but you just know they never would.
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I watched the game last night in a pub, and one of my mates came who is a non-football fan and he pointed out some obvious flaws with the format. Then I heard Linekar this morning make a different point about the format.
I've never been a fan of the 24-team Euros, although I think this has been the best one. My point has been that it dilutes the quality and makes it too easy to qualify for many big teams. For instance, Netherlands should now be out for finishing third; now they'll end up knocking us out and making the final. England should have been facing at least some jeopardy last night etc
The obvious flaw pointed out by my friend was that two of the groups winners have to face 2nd place teams just because of luck of the draw. Then last night demonstrated the advantage Slovenia had over teams in Group A and B because they knew they could get a draw and qualify.
This feels a little like a smaller version of the old West Germany vs Austria situation in 1982.
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24 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:
The book isn't finished yet. The first three chapters haven't been great, but chapter 4 against (probably) the Netherlands might be different. Win that and who knows where it will lead.
What I'm saying is, let's at least give England the opportunity to be knocked out, before we write the tournament off as being terrible.
My point way back was never to say that I thought Southgate was awful or a disaster. I was just giving my opinion that, all things considered, I didn't feel that what he had achieved was as praiseworthy as some people seem to think.
I felt that it was much closer to being what I've seen from England over many years, rather than some absolutely golden period where we've been doing things never seen or heard of before from any England team.
I've never thought it was golden in terms of play, but IMO it was largely different than what we've seen this time and the tournaments prior.
We've always had the odd game like this (Scotland, USA) and overall played conservatively but interspersed it with a mix of decent performances and solid games. I'll come back to games like the 6-2 against Iran or 4-0 against Ukraine. The 2016/2024 England teams would be struggling and maybe grinding out results in games like that.
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1 hour ago, Tommygilf said:
Southgate has managed to get the Spanish league's top player, the English League's top player, and the top scorer in Germany all playing in a system that apparently suits none of them.
I think the problem is that he isn't brave enough to drop one of them if the system isn't working.
They were talking on the Rest Is Football today, and Micah Richards gave his preferred team but as soon as he realised Bellingham wasn't in it, backtracked.
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5 hours ago, Gerrumonside ref said:
For the record I don’t think we’re going to win the thing and never have.
We might have good individual players on paper, but this is a team sport and we just don’t look effective as a team. The truth is we haven’t gelled in the run up either.
I just would invite you to see some positives from the situation we are in: strong squad, injury free, no major discipline problem and a route to the latter stages avoiding the better teams.
Things have definitely opened up. I'll feel better if we avoid the Netherlands. Yes they aren't a top side by their standards but they're always going to be a challenge even if we are playing well.
I actually thought last night was a minor improvement and defensively we've looked better than expected. Southgate has to be brave enough to learn the lessons from last night, rather than stubbornly trying to persist. I suspect he's much happier with how it's going than the rest of the country.
My main concern is that even with the open draw, we'll get a minnow and because we're not creating much, we'll get dragged into extra-time and the lottery of penalties.
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1 hour ago, Gerrumonside ref said:
On the flip side we do have a strong squad with options off the bench even if we’ve not come together as an XI yet.
Also we’ve avoided injuries or any disciplinary problems so far which is a big plus.
We may have been unimpressive but we’ve won the group expending the minimum amount of energy.
Does seem that the tournament itself is quite open with no standout teams so far, even if they may have played better than England so far.
I admire your positivity, but this is far more likely to end in tears than anything else.
We went into this tournament with an amazing attack, the best of the tournament, and have scored 2 OK goals in 3 games.
There's a decent chance we play Holland next and if we do we're out IMO. The German player pundit on Bild.de, laughed at the idea we could do well and said we're out next round regardless of who we play.
I came into this as a great Southgate defender but not only have we not done well, it can be clearly pointed to him why we haven't. It'll be a shame if he ends on this note.
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We're now basically in the situation I feared. The system that Southgate has persisted with clearly doesn't work and now we're faced with the dilemma of sticking with it or changing it for the knockouts.
What a disaster.
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13 minutes ago, Gerrumonside ref said:
Alphabet!
Qualification record.
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Yeh... so that was a massive improvement.
It's almost like the system doesn't work, not just swapping one player...
We've won the group (very unconvincingly) but there's a chance we now face the Netherlands. That'll be fun.
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1 hour ago, Tommygilf said:
I don't see him changing anything too much.
Part of me is also wary of changing the team system to fit Foden in a bit better, especially when Bellingham has been so good this season.
One thing has been clear, Foden-Kane-Saka hasn't worked and is still likely to be a problem tonight.
It comes back to the old do you find a place for your best players, or build around one or two in the correct position. The latter seems obvious but I can understand how Southgate is scared of leaving Foden out, and scared of moving Bellingham out of his best position.
The result however has been a disjointed and confused looking England.
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8 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
I think the only other change they could make is Watkins for Kane. TAA has made some good passes, but otherwise has been a total passenger in midfield as the games have passed him by.
I just think above anything the performance needs to be better and have more energy and impetus. We can't scrape by Slovenia.
Worryingly, as it stands we could be heading for an on paper pretty good run to the (semi) final...
Based on the Denmark game, there's no such thing..
We'll know more tonight, but I wouldn't be confident of putting anyone to the sword, and probably ending up on penalties.
Nearly every pundit I've heard has been saying that we need to move Foden into the middle and Bellingham back with Gordon on the left. We brought Gallagher on against Denmark and it changed next to nothing. The issues seem far more fundamental than a one-in, one-out.
I'm hoping we see a reaction tonight, but what we gonna do if it's not working again? Stubbornly persist, or change it in the knockouts?
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1 hour ago, Tommygilf said:
The messages out of the England Camp have suddenly gotten very defensive.
This is going to end in tears.
Word is that they're only going to switch Trent for Gallagher.
If that's the level if change they think is necessary, then it definitely is.
One good performance could switch it all around, but it isn't going to happen magically. If as expected we play the same tonight, what then? Go into a knockout game trying to change the system?
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18 minutes ago, Sidi Fidi Gold said:
England will play a 3rd placed team in the last 16, probably Slovakia or Austria, then probably Italy in the Q/F
I looked at it the other night, it's basically a bit of a free for all. All that's guaranteed is that we play Germany if we come second.
Other than that it very much depends on which groups teams finish 3rd from. It could be any team from DEF if we finish top. At the moment that's Austria, Slovakia and Czechia.
If we come 3rd, Portugal is looking likely, but it could be the top of Belgium's group.
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Euro 2024
in Any Other Business / Any Other Sports
Posted
I've got really mixed feelings about being on the 'easier' side of the draw.
On the one hand, I want to see England win something and if we did I wouldn't care how we did it. This draw is a positive on that front.
On the other hand, I want to see us against the big countries and I want to see us beat an in-form top nation. I don't want to have to wait for the final before that happens. The best we can get is Italy or the Netherlands, and they aren't on top form.
It is more likely than not that we won't make the final, so we're facing a good chance of losing to a relative minnow or a poor version of a big country.
Even though we might lose, I think I want the excitement of France, Spain, Germany or Portugal. It feels like we could only get that in a final now.