International Football - England - Euros - World Cup Etc

[wassy04]

I'm glad someone has mentioned the quality of players because they seem to be getting a bit of a free ride. Kane and Bellingham carried England to that semi-final and - apart from the odd flash from the others - there weren't consistent contributions. Anderson and Gordon had moments and as you say Spence was magnificent last night but other than that, what?

You see pundits in the media wanging on about how great England's players are, but are they? I don't watch enough overseas football to know how England's squad depth compares to that of the other top nations but could it be that we're just not as good as we want to think? Look at who Spain brought on in their semi: Pedri, Williams. Merino, Torres. I don't think England has that quality through the rest of the squad.

Same could easily be said for Argentina too though. Are there really loads of people suggesting our players are that great? I would say most expected us to go out at this point pre tournament.

I think pre tournament we looked at the squad and thought we were very top heavy.

Many good and fair points being made. What I would say is though who picked this squad? Who decided to leave players such as Hall, Shaw, Maguire and TAA out? Who brought in another CB when a FB was injured pre tournament? Who was it that felt taking James as one of your only FB options when he struggles to keep fit was a good idea? Who left inform players at home for players like Eze, Madueke and a half fit Saka? And yes, inevitably had he changed like for like last night and we lost then there would have been disappointment but at least we may have lost fighting rather than lying down the way we did. Yes maybe not world beaters but we had the tools to change like for like and what gets me most is that clearly Tuchel didn’t have confidence in certain players he put in his squad - Mainoo, Watkins, Chalobah for example played zero minutes.

100%, that's what I meant by pre-tournament. Selecting a bunch of injured players (Saka, Livramento, James) and a bunch of backups (Stones, Madueke, Henderson, Spence). Then you add in the likes of Mainoo and Chalobah pointlessly being brought too. Thing is these were really obvious errors at the time, Madueke over Bowen just made so little sense. It felt like Tuchel thought he knew better than the club managers that weren't selecting these players. Madueke is the worst one though and so it proved and left us with no right side. 

I'm not really sure what Tuchel got right during the tournament? Bringing on Dan Burn when we were down to 10 men?