Maximus Decimus
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Posts posted by Maximus Decimus
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Has that ever happened? All 3 missed for Slovenia and all 3 scored for Portugal.
When England fans feel pity for you, it must be bad.
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39 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:
What a 90 minutes from Slovenia! It's great to see a smaller nation actually attacking and pushing forward rather than sitting right back and relying on the occasional counter attack.
210 minutes without conceding against two of the supposed best attacking teams in the tournament.
Penalties!
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1 hour ago, 17 stone giant said:
It was low on quality, but high on drama. And because we won, I'm finding it easy to look back with fondness at the match - especially the two goals. There have been plenty of dramatic England matches involving extra time or penalties over the years, and this is another of those to add to the collection. Thankfully we came out on top on this occasion, so for me it feels great. I'd take that over having played brilliantly but losing.
We can dissect the performances and review everything once we're out. Until then, I'm just enjoying being in the tournament. I've got a friends meet up next weekend and it would have been flat if England had gone out. But we're not, we're in the QF next Saturday against Switzerland.
Come on England!
I think that's why I did my post about it not overshadowing the reality of a bad performance.
Because it was euphoric at the time. It's the first I've even had a glimmer of the 'it's coming home' stuff and dancing round the room to World in Motion.
Anything from here is a bonus, because we were out, we were gone and I was already planning my week as if we were gone. It wasn't just a late winner, it was at the point where Slovakia were dragging out injury time and nothing was happening.
I can't think of a comparable sporting event for one or my teams.
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1 hour ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:
In fairness to Switzerland, their high press they put on Italy was flawless, world class, and should they do that to us with how we cautiously and slowly to the point of snails pace pass the ball along the back line we are gonna get stripped of that ball every time we get it and get absolutely slaughtered.
Have faith that Southgate will change the system...
He's like the Lord Melchett of football manager.
'So, are we going to change the system around and admit it isn't working?'
'Exactly, exactly what the enemy would expect us to do and therefore exactly what we shan't do!'
I'm actually hopeful that injuries might force some changes that end up being positive.
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4 hours ago, gingerjon said:
I don't think anyone is seriously saying England played well - I certainly haven't seen anyone do an about face on that.
The ref was weirdly bad so he'll almost certainly get the final now.
He set out determined to give yellows and fair enough, but completely shied away when it meant a red might be given.
I thought we were very lucky with their goal. If he goes down after thr contact from Guehi, it's a penalty and Guehi is off as he was already on a yellow.
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1 hour ago, JonM said:
Certainly agree that Switzerland will start as strong favourites.
Not according to the bookies.
England are 11/10 and Switzerland 3-1 in ordinary time.
You've gotta respect the bookies, but this is not evidence based.
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For all the excitement and the great escape, it can't mask what was an objectively terrible performance.
We've escaped against a minnow, but demonstrated little hope that things will improve. Southgate got very lucky because he was in for a world of criticism had we gone out: playing the same way as the previous 3 games, bringing like no-one on, wasting the lucky draw etc
The biggest positive is that it could light a fire up them. Switzerland are good but it's certainly winnable if things go our way.
On another note, I thought the referee was bad. He was overly card happy then stopped showing them even though one yellow-carded player was continually doing bad fouls. Then, in injury time he started giving it every time a Slovakian player went down.
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42 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:
I hope Maximus and gingerjon got their tram without too much of a delay.
Such a weird feeling. I wasn't just resigned to going out, I was basically making plans as if we were out.
I can't believe we're somehow still in it.
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81 minutes and we've brought on one sub due to injury.
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St Jude isn't winning over any fans. What a petulant child.
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I genuinely can't believe what I've seen.
300 minutes of dross and clear evidence the system isn't working only to try it again and expect a different scenario.
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2 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
Thorough deserved lead from Slovakia. Being aggressive and direct when they have the ball and getting the chances as a result.
England making nice shapes at walking pace.
One of the biggest contrast with last night's game, is how often Germany and Denmark ran with the ball.
Are we told we're not allowed to?
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Southgate's stubbornness is going to mean he leaves in ignomany.
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I don't want to make any projections based on 3 minutes but...
Nothing has changed. Literally nothing.
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12 hours ago, gingerjon said:
I think the only VAR decision wrong in this game was disallowing the first German goal.
That said, Germany have got worse with each game so far.
I agree they were both technically correct, but I also think the first one was.
I don't watch a great deal of football, but it honestly feels like football has become like the caricature that Anthony Gelling joked about when they first brought it in. I don't know if it's worse at this Euros, but it has got to the point where you don't fully cheer because you wait for the replay.
RL went through this problem too (and hasn't perfected it), when they would go looking for reasons to chalk off tries based on technicalities. We'd end up with spurious decisions based on obstruction that took ages and pleased no-one. The infamous (to me) Widnes vs Barrow chest pass was the worst for me.
I'm of the opinion that if the attack think it's a try and the defence think it's a try then give it. That's why I prefer challenge systems like they have in tennis.
With regards to football, the goal-line technology works well and if they can get offsides to be instant (surely the machine knows straight away) then that would be accepted. People can moan about it only being a toe or whatever, but there has to be a cut-off point.
The handball rule is a mess. I've spoken before about the problem with the penalty rule and this is exacerbated by interpretations like this. In a sport like football, where a game averages fewer than 3 points, giving somebody an 80%+ chance of scoring should be am extreme event. However, it's treated like giving someone a kick at goal in rugby.
They should make handballs part of a challenge system and it should have to be that they've gained a clear advantage from it IMO. Had his hand not touched the ball, then a clear goal-scoring chance would have occurred. Finding this exact balance might be hard, but there's no way last night's example deserves to give Germany a huge advantage in winning the game.
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3 hours ago, gingerjon said:
Switerland v Italy, Germany v Denmark
Bookies have Italy as 6/4 favourites in the first (Switzerland 12/5), with Germany odds-on in the second and Denmark out at 9/2.
The first one could genuinely go either way I reckon. As for the second, it will surely be a comfortable German victory.
Form seemingly counts for naught with the bookies, as England are 2/5 to win in normal time and Slovakia are 8-1.
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4 hours ago, Cumbrian Fanatic said:
Are you Charlie Bucket?
I hope not. Can you imagine the smell in a house with 4 bedridden grandparents eating cabbage every day...
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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.
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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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Euro 2024
in Any Other Business / Any Other Sports
Posted
You raise a very good point. When England are aimlessly passing it around the back and reluctant to move forward, it's not because they're clueless. They understand far more than any of us do. It's because they can see the danger of what is there.
From a layman's POV, I don't understand why it is seen as safer keeping the ball around the defence than getting the ball up the field. You're always one mistake away from a very dangerous situation as evidenced by Pepe last night.