Sterling | Page 2 | Vital Football

Sterling

king_dezeeuw06 said:
To be fair to Sterling he was excellent for City but been played out of position for England. I think putting him out wide would've been better use of him.

I think a lot of England's issues were down to our formation and selections. When you attack England down the flanks we got out numbered every time and it was where all the threats came from. Trippier was excellent but Young offers very little threat from left wing back and is not a good enough defender to cope with the opposition outnumbering him. So we were lob sided as we didn't have an effective left sidd attack or defence.

Because we played wing backs in the hot climate it is hard to constantly get up and down so we ended up more of a 5-3-2 when we were attacked and it often left us out numbered in midfield meaning we lost control of the games when other teams came on strong. It meant more attack minded players like Ali who was awful all tournament (maybe because of role or injury) had to take more defensive responsibility and couldn't attack like he does for his club. Ali shouldn't have started those games in that system, maybe Lingard too, they just didn't seem to fit comfortably into it for me.

Then at the back Naughtan tried hard but he's not a centre back and was by far the most suspect of our back 3. I thought he might've been used there so we could switch into a back 4 to adapt to the game and he could help overlap with Tripperi but he never got that far forward and pretty much stayed as a CB all the time, so we didnt really seem to gain anything over putting him there over a natrual CB. I think Maguire and Stones were both excellent and our defensive solidarity came more from them rather than the system.

I think a 4-5-1 / 4-3-3 with wide men or even wing backs with 1 central striker and 2 wide men like we used to do would've suited us better in my opinion. I think wing backs can work but we didn't deploy it very effectively.
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Naughtan ? Who is this ?
 
I think Sterling is getting some unjust criticism and is being made a scapegoat.
Most times in the later stages he was our only attacking outlet but the other players didn't seem to be on his wavelength. A few of them didn't make themselves available for a pass or make runs to create space for others.
That for me is were English players still lack tactically. Poor movement and forethought.

We still had a good World Cup though and the nation reconnected.
Looking at the recent success of English underage groups maybe we're learning. I think the future looks bright for English football.
 
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