Crikey you lot don't fuck about do you! I was too busy celebrating last night to post up a comment, and I come on now to see there are already nearly 4 pages worth already! Don't you have any beers in your fridges?? Haha
I'm with AK and the more considered posts. Always makes me smile some of the negative comments when it comes to England performances. I can understand where they come from, but they just demonstrate a complete lack of consideration to all the important elements, especially in these typically high pressure tense opening matches. By that I mean:
- We have one of the youngest and more inexperienced teams in the competition
- The pressure of needing to win the opening game against weaker opposition
- Certain key players are still carrying the burden of the defeat against Iceland in the Euros on their shoulders, which creates additional pressure to that
- Tunisia being the highest ranked African team (for good reason) and one of the more defensively organised teams out of the 'smaller' nations in the competition
- The fact they put 10 men behind the ball in the second half in the hope of grinding out a point (which doesn't matter how good you are, is never a straight forward task)
- They fact Tunisia matched up our formation in the 2nd half, and used aggressive defensive some what cynical tactics throughout (especially on Kane, Ali, and Sterling)
- The heat. Not an excuse, but a very important factor. It was hotter in Volgograd than any other location so far in this tournament according to the commentators, which after our first half high press work rate, is inevitably going to cause tiredness in the latter stages of the game and make it harder to pass/move/press at the tempo we did in the first half
- The biased officiating regarding the penalty decisions, which would have been on the players minds second half
Yes we missed some guilt edged chances, yes we looked a bit laboured for a period in the second half, yes we looked a little nervous in defence with certain players made some dodgy mistakes that could have cost us, yes certain players (especially Sterling) made the wrong decisions at times going forward and arguably could have done better, yes GS could and maybe should have made his subs a bit earlier etc etc, but all in all, given the above and how difficult the first game at the World Cup more than often is, I think we played very well and massively deserved the win. On another day, with better finishing and a VAR panel that didn't include Stevie Wonders Russian cousin, we would have been 3 or 4 nil up in the first half, and the game would have been a foregone conclusion.
Far more positives than negatives for me, and how some people can't see those and still have a moan just shows a lack of understanding of football I think.
3 biggest positives for me:
- How we went at Tunisia from the off; playing on the front foot, with a high intensity tactical press/clever running off the ball/looking to get in behind at every opportunity etc.
- How good we were at set pieces. Great to see and here from GS how important they realise set pieces will be for us at this tournament and how hard they have worked on them. The delivery from corners and free kicks was first class from Tripper especially, and it's no wonder we scored from two of them. I can't remember for a long long time us being that effective all game from set plays.
- Harry Kane getting off the mark and only having two real chances, and scoring both. Watching massive players like Saurez, Muller, Messi etc, miss guilt edge opportunities, then seeing our main man tuck away that header (which wasn't as easy as Saurez opportunity in the 1st half against Egypt) will do his confidence no end of good, and will be massive for us going into the bigger matches if we do progress to the latter rounds.
All in all, a very positive performance, a massive 3 points in the bag, and given the lack of bottle and quality shown by some of the biggest countries in their opening games (of which only Spain have been a class apart going forward imo) I think we have every chance of progressing to the latter stages. Anything can happen, and most of the bigger nations will no doubt improve as the tournament unfolds, but we have as good a chance as we have had in a long time to do well I think.