England v Russia | Vital Football

England v Russia

ME2blue

ME2blue

Vital Squad Member
How do you see this one going? Rumour has it in the red tops today that Woy is persisting with Kane and Vardy up front with Rooney behind. I personally thought that with Rooney pushing up from the middle Kane and Barry are being forced out on the wings.

I try and be optimistic every tournament but I can see a struggle to reach the knock out stages to be honest.

:93:
 
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Bearing in mind that the best 4 our of the 6, 3rd place teams go into the knock out stages then I wouldn't imagine we'd struggle to get into the knockout stages. That said, if you come 3rd in the group you end up playing one of the 1st places in another group. Which clearly means it's very easy for you to lose at the first knock out round before the quarters because you're playing some very hard opponents.

It's important we don't do what we've done in recent years, similar to Arsenal, and make it hard on ourselves by losing early matches, crawl through and end up in a game against some much harder teams early on.

If we win the group we would play the best 3rd placed group of A, C or D.
If we came 2nd, we would play the 2nd placed team of group F (You'd think this would be one of Portugal/Austria)
If we came 3rd, we would play the 1st placed team in C1 or D1. So potentially Spain or Germany. This clearly makes it very hard to progress if you come 3rd.

Many will say, if you want to win, you have to beat the best and it shouldn't matter when you play them, which of course is true, but these are probably the same people that will knock England for only getting to the Quarter Finals of a competition when we go out against Germany or something, and praise other teams who simply get into the semi's by beating some very average teams and go out in the semi's against the first serious team they come up against.

I do get the feeling that the players are in a better place mentally than in previous tournements. Am not sure about the rooney/vardy/kane combo though. That was awful in the last match. Hopefully we will just play 4 up front. I suppose it's good that it will have Russia second guessing though and unable to prepare fully for one or the other.
 
I'd love to see us play like we did against Germany recently, a performance like that will see us demolish Russia.
 
I'd rather not go 2-0 down against russia and rely on an injury time goal to win it...but of course i'd take it if offered.
 
as well as he has done with England there is no room in the team for Rooney IMO. Ali would be better behind the front 2 and would naturally play in the space behind them rather than going up top and forcing Kane & Vardy out wide.

Also - Kane taking set pieces has to be a rues. I think Roy probably has a few surprises in store.
 
Kane - V?rdy with Rooney behind didn't work against Portugal but the reasons why were easily highlighted and should be fixable in training. I expect us to play with those three against Russia but then a change of plan and formation against Wales. I expect a slightly more cautious formation against Wales with sometime like Milner holding with Dyer in order to neutralise the threat from Bale.

The problem with the formation against Portugal was that it was created with Bale in mind (Ronaldo being the star man playing in a similar role to Bale but alas was missing)
 
Our defence bothers me, it looks like the two Spurs lads as wing backs? Cahill and Smalling in the middle. Not much else to choose from except Stones. Despite Chelsea's almost non stop 30M pursuit of Stones last season I personally find him defensively weak and vastly overrated.
 
"The problem with the formation against Portugal was that it was created with Bale in mind (Ronaldo being the star man playing in a similar role to Bale but alas was missing)"

Are you sure? It wasn't like Roy found out at the last minute Ronaldo wouldn't be playing. Roy openly admitted the game was set up initially with Bale in mind, but it was clear a week or more before the game that Ronaldo wouldn't be playing and would be rested. He was posting snaps on social media of himself on holiday about 3 days before the game!

I don't think Roy would have still set up the team to prepare for Ronaldo (i.e. to prepare for Bale) if it was clear days before that Ronaldo wasn't playing. What a waste of a warm up game that would have been.

Milner played on the right, which is where he's played very well for Liverpool in the 2nd half of this year. I think I read he had more assists than Ozil since January. ESPN thinks Milner was the top assisting englishman this season. Only 4 players in the Premier League get more assists than him. He might not be the glitz and glamour some are after, but he's a starter in my team any day. Especially for his defensive qualities as well, he can potentially help out against Bale.
 
jokerman said:
Since we’re dragging ancient threads up -plus this has a different spin to it now.
Click to expand...

And it`s Captain, sounding (and acting) like Carlo Gambino, is currently giving a team talk. Putin is the most dangerous "player" that Russia has had in many, many years. I`m hoping he gets a red card and an early bath, in some X water.
 
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