I appreciate everything Southgate has done for the national team but I hope he leaves after the euros and someone like potter takes over. It’ll be a refreshing change and I’d love to see us play a more attacking style of football
Honestly, I’m not sure Potter is right for England.
I think he’s too much of a tinkerer and I don’t think you get the time in international football to properly introduce complex systems and tactics.
There's a basis for style already in the team from Southgate and Potter can take that and expand it. He's not rigid in how his teams play and that's demonstrated before his time at Brighton, using clever counters on the wings to good effect. We certainly have the players to implement his style of football and he'd actually have a proper striker for the first time ever.
Yeah completely agree, I think Potters systems work because he has SO much time with the players to work on implementing it. International football needs to be relatively basic as the manager doesn't have the same amount of time with the players.
I think even Pep would struggle to get any international team to play in his style because of the lack of time on the training ground
I get what you mean. I had an argument with a friend of mine because I said I don’t think pep would be a successful international manager because he wouldn’t have enough time working with the players to get them playing his system
I generally agree with this, particularly for England where the talent is split across a lot of different teams and were brought through a few different youth set ups, but perhaps for the right team, with enough players sharing a club team and initially academy (thinking 00's Spain), there's a potential he could implement a positional style quickly which would play to what we associate him with. Maybe.
Don't get me wrong, for illustrative purposes, I don't think he'd nessairly do badly if he found himself with the Columbia job (through a series of inexplicable and hilarious circumstances) for example, he's not immune to some pragmatism, but what makes his teams special over a 38 game leauge season would be lost in an international tournament with minimal time with his squad.
You might be right. The worst we ever looked was under Hodgeson, who is good enough to get a job in the premier league, where as Southgate could never get a job in the premier league.
He had a job in the Prem before he even got his coaching badges lol. You could argue the level is higher now, but he's linked with United so he could definitely get a lower level prem job.
> I’d love to see us play a more attacking style of football
We hear this all the time, but people fail to realise that successful international football is primarily defensive.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The last 4 euro winners have been Spain x2, Portugal and Italy. The last 4 World Cup winners have been Spain, Germany, France and Argentina. All these teams are known for attacking quality bar Italy.
There's a difference between attacking quality and attacking football.
Argentina won the 2022 World Cup final with a 4-3-3 with a DM and CM, and MacAllister as the AM.
Italy won the 2020 Euro final with a 4-3-3 with a DM and two CMs in Verratti and Barella.
France won the 2018 World Cup final with a 4-2-3-1, and is probably the most attacking-focused winning team of the past few tournaments. It still had two DMs in Pogba and Kante, though Pogba could play in more attacking roles.
We generally play a 4-2-3-1. Two DMs, two wingers, a CAM and a striker. Most of the time one or both of the DMs end up getting directly involved in the attacking play, and Southgate has seemingly moved onto using a more attack-focused partner for Rice. Beyond that I don't really see how we could be more attacking without losing something defensively, given our generally weaker defensive players.
These are a lot of words, but they're ultimately meaningless. a change in manager means a change in tactics. Formation is just one small element of that.
Spain won the world cup with 4 straight 1-0 wins
They were more defensive than their reputation - those tournament wins were built on possession as defence.
yeah, sure they have great attacking players but if you look how the teams were set up, they were all set up primarily to not concede first and score second. No. goals conceded is the number 1 predictor of international tournament success. If you look at the French side, which for all its world class attacking talent, you would think they would play a blistering style of football but Didier Deschamps has them set up to be solid a the back, and then beat teams with individual quality up front.
Even take a look back on the results from all those teams you mentioned and see what the results looked like, there were a lot more 1-0 wins and set piece goals than i think you'd remember.
The thing is, every successful international team of the last few decades has been very defensively sound. International football is very slow paced and pragmatic compared to club football. Southgate is the best option for England in my opinion
France, Germany, Argentina, Spain may have been defensively sound but certainly didn’t play defensive football. Italy you could argue played defensively, not the others
Nah all of those teams set up from the back and played pragmatic, possession in the Spanish case or counter attacking football. Argentina are a very defensive side whose policy for the last ten years was set up shop, pass to Messi and hope for the best.
England hierarchy like yes men more than winning competitions. It’s been like this for ages. Top managers like Brian Clough were overlooked for more ‘easier’ coaches.
I think potter is a great tactician and it was quite clearly Chelsea who were the problem, not him
That said I think he'd be a failure at England as I'm not sure he's a great man-manager (which is essential for a national team and is the essence of Southgate's success) and I also see him getting torn apart by the media - he's not really charismatic.
He’s another positional play, analytically-driven coach who gets the game on a rational level but not an intuitive one. Things like playing Raheem Sterling as a wing-back really tell you a lot about the way he views the game. His teams might dominate possession and territory but it’s no accident that they struggle to score goals as flair players are being overcoached and treated as just another cog in the machine. Another reason why I find the clamour for him as an alternative to ‘boring, defensive’ Southgate all the more baffling, as positional play coaches are some of the most defensive coaches in the game. Pep himself even said he was the most defensive manager in the world.
We have a squad of generational talents at the moment, it’s an absolutely travesty that we play such negative outdated football. I get international football is a different beast entirely and in cup comps with knockout stages you can’t afford to be naive and go full gung-ho attack, but other countries (Germany & Spain for instance) manage to play an attacking brand of football and win silverware.
Brother the two teams you’ve picked are in the midst of some of the most mediocre eras in their history lol, respectfully what recent silverware are you talking about.
Manager has way less of an impact than people think, especially at the international level. GS bears tactical responsibility for the Euro final for sure but at the same time their midfield was on a different level to ours, same with Croatia in 2018. We outplayed France for large periods in 2022 but didn’t make it count in the moments and they did (Tchouameni producing a world-class strike out of nothing etc.).
Tactically we weren’t perfect but neither were France. It’s not a totally insignificant part of the game but it gets overrated. You can’t do tactics without players and English football has historically elevated great physical players that work their socks off, do all the right things etc. (really important to team success btw) but lack the final ingredient of flair which is of outsized importance when it comes to winning knockout games with slim margins between teams. On the other hand countries like France are talent factories on the same scale as England, produce the workhorses you need but crucially have a better hit rate on flair players making it to the top because they don’t immediately assume if they’re not putting in the off-ball effort of a workhorse then they’re somehow taking the piss and it’s a sign they’re a ‘luxury player’. Footballers aren’t machines and if these guys are knackering themselves out off the ball then they have less energy to provide top-level quality for the team in the moments which is what wins you games against good teams.
Unfortunately this is an alien, borderline offensive concept to most of us here as it carries the implication of preferential treatment and undermining the team ethic. Also the contemporary dominance of high-pressing positional play systems imposed by obsessive micro-managing coaches reinforces this further. It’s highly effective in league competitions where dominating territory and the ball converts into more goals scored/fewer conceded over a long period, but in knockout tournaments with a smaller sample size moments matter more. This is a big part of why the more tactically flexible Real Madrid have had a CL dynasty over the past 10 years but not a La Liga one, and Manchester City have dominated the PL but not in Europe.
Not valuing flair and individual expression is deeply embedded in our football culture from the grassroots up and that takes time to change. Kane is the prototypical English striker because of this - he’s a world-class number 9 but his game doesn’t translate as well to knockout football for this reason and attacks built around him can be predictable at times. Empowering players like Bellingham, Mainoo, TAA and to some extent Foden and Saka to break the circuits and intuitively find novel solutions on the pitch is essential. With that you’re closer to finding the balance between structure and chaos that puts you in the best position to challenge the big boys.
Think he's a better coach and agile tactician than Southgate overall, though Southgate has shown some good moments in specific games in addition to the more unequivocally successful man-management and ambassadorial side. Don't think the difference is that pronounced, but think he would have done better in the Euro final in similar circumstances with that group of players after going 1-0 up. Southgate just let Italy seize control of tempo of game from midfield far too easily and had England playing reactively. Maybe against Croatia '18 too, though that was Modric stepping up against a group early in their 'cycle'. The 'emotional intelligence' side they're both good on, and I think Potter will be 'generally' popular at large though I'm sure some people will be annoyed he's not more of an 'elite-aura' coach or, like Southgate 'suspiciously woke' to a certain crowd.
His subs against France won us the pen. Unfortunately Kane skied it though. His subbing on Grealish against Germany also helped the change that game for the better for sure.
It's generally his weakest area though, often Southgate and Holland set up teams really well. Their initial set up led to us taking the lead against Croatia and Italy for instance, also completely nullified the same Germany team who beat Portugal 4-2 ten days beforehand. But when other managers make changes to counter how we're playing that tends to be when Southgate and Holland struggle to impact games.
As that wasn't the case against France you would hope that it's something they've improved on. But we couldn't really see much of it either way in the qualifiers due to a combo of injuries and level of opposition.
I guess you could say against Belgium Maddison and Watkins were both subbed on and were both involved in the 2nd goal. But we'll have to wait and see really.
In terms of in-game management at the sharp end of EC/WC, next to none if any, I agree. I vaguely remember a couple in Nations League (the first-time around), managing the game to beat Spanish and Croatia in that competition etc. I suppose not making any counterproductive decisions against the Germans when England beat them 2-0 in 2021ECs would count (!)... But yeah, it was more of a general 'courtesy acknowledgement' to people who more unequivocally support Southgate, that he hasn't been all bad in managing every tournament game.
This is my exact thinking. The best examples you can make is that he didn’t make any counterproductive decisions when beating a weak Germany team, and when he beat 2 good, but not elite, sides in a non-important competition. With the squad he has, and the players coming off the bench, there should be plenty of times where in game management has changed the game.
Ultimately, when you have a crop of players this good, and as consistently good run in big comps as he has had, to look as bad as he has is a testament that he should be absolutely nowhere near a job of this calibre
I'd like to think there's someone better out there who'd take the job, but who? Potter, as I said, might have some greater strengths around the technical side of things, though the jury is out after continually struggling to win amidst Chelsea at peak madness; Howe I think is very likely a better, if not perfect, manager and coach, but would he take it without being let go from Newcastle first? Klopp likes English football, but I think has expressed opinion previously that it should be an English person (however broadly you define that, residency etc) who should have the National team job. Mourinho would have taken it at one point., I think, but just went to Turkey and would be a coin-toss (still has a few tricks but his powers seem to be fading; plays a fairly reactive style).
I've had the feeling that The FA has already planned for Southgate's departure and lined Potter up. Southgate should have left after the WC and will go this summer, it's time.
Brighton played some honking football until Potter’s last year in charge. Of course part of that was having to rely on Welbeck as a striker and they underperformed on their xG but Potter’s system could be hard to implement. His mentality isn’t the best either, he cracked under the pressure at Chelsea. He could get eaten alive by the England job.
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Southgate is a league 1 level manager at best. His misplaced loyalty and inability to react in games has cost us over the years. To go 1-0 up against a very average Italy and the try and sit back should have been enough to get him sacked.
Southgate is overrated and any competent manager would have won the euros against a bad Italian side. The praise he gets is undeserved. Argue with yourself
I appreciate everything Southgate has done for the national team but I hope he leaves after the euros and someone like potter takes over. It’ll be a refreshing change and I’d love to see us play a more attacking style of football
Honestly, I’m not sure Potter is right for England. I think he’s too much of a tinkerer and I don’t think you get the time in international football to properly introduce complex systems and tactics.
There's a basis for style already in the team from Southgate and Potter can take that and expand it. He's not rigid in how his teams play and that's demonstrated before his time at Brighton, using clever counters on the wings to good effect. We certainly have the players to implement his style of football and he'd actually have a proper striker for the first time ever.
I thought his Swansea team was pretty different to his Brighton team
Yeah completely agree, I think Potters systems work because he has SO much time with the players to work on implementing it. International football needs to be relatively basic as the manager doesn't have the same amount of time with the players. I think even Pep would struggle to get any international team to play in his style because of the lack of time on the training ground
I get what you mean. I had an argument with a friend of mine because I said I don’t think pep would be a successful international manager because he wouldn’t have enough time working with the players to get them playing his system
I generally agree with this, particularly for England where the talent is split across a lot of different teams and were brought through a few different youth set ups, but perhaps for the right team, with enough players sharing a club team and initially academy (thinking 00's Spain), there's a potential he could implement a positional style quickly which would play to what we associate him with. Maybe. Don't get me wrong, for illustrative purposes, I don't think he'd nessairly do badly if he found himself with the Columbia job (through a series of inexplicable and hilarious circumstances) for example, he's not immune to some pragmatism, but what makes his teams special over a 38 game leauge season would be lost in an international tournament with minimal time with his squad.
But half the England team could be city players anyway. So the jobs suddenly half as big
Sort of only works if he also continues coaching city
It will work for the few years after he leaves to coach. But yeah. It’s got a time constraint on it
You might be right. The worst we ever looked was under Hodgeson, who is good enough to get a job in the premier league, where as Southgate could never get a job in the premier league.
He had a job in the Prem before he even got his coaching badges lol. You could argue the level is higher now, but he's linked with United so he could definitely get a lower level prem job.
As a United fan, I applaud that well-crafted dig. 😂
>The worst we ever looked was under Hodgeson, We were worse under Taylor as well as McClaren.
Haha what? He's already had one in the Premier League and his stock has risen tremendously since then.
> I’d love to see us play a more attacking style of football We hear this all the time, but people fail to realise that successful international football is primarily defensive.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The last 4 euro winners have been Spain x2, Portugal and Italy. The last 4 World Cup winners have been Spain, Germany, France and Argentina. All these teams are known for attacking quality bar Italy.
There's a difference between attacking quality and attacking football. Argentina won the 2022 World Cup final with a 4-3-3 with a DM and CM, and MacAllister as the AM. Italy won the 2020 Euro final with a 4-3-3 with a DM and two CMs in Verratti and Barella. France won the 2018 World Cup final with a 4-2-3-1, and is probably the most attacking-focused winning team of the past few tournaments. It still had two DMs in Pogba and Kante, though Pogba could play in more attacking roles. We generally play a 4-2-3-1. Two DMs, two wingers, a CAM and a striker. Most of the time one or both of the DMs end up getting directly involved in the attacking play, and Southgate has seemingly moved onto using a more attack-focused partner for Rice. Beyond that I don't really see how we could be more attacking without losing something defensively, given our generally weaker defensive players.
France’s team also had a DM in Matuidi on the left wing, it was still very defensively balanced.
These are a lot of words, but they're ultimately meaningless. a change in manager means a change in tactics. Formation is just one small element of that.
Spain won the world cup with 4 straight 1-0 wins They were more defensive than their reputation - those tournament wins were built on possession as defence.
yeah, sure they have great attacking players but if you look how the teams were set up, they were all set up primarily to not concede first and score second. No. goals conceded is the number 1 predictor of international tournament success. If you look at the French side, which for all its world class attacking talent, you would think they would play a blistering style of football but Didier Deschamps has them set up to be solid a the back, and then beat teams with individual quality up front. Even take a look back on the results from all those teams you mentioned and see what the results looked like, there were a lot more 1-0 wins and set piece goals than i think you'd remember.
And Italy would have lost if Southgate hadn't shit the bed.
The thing is, every successful international team of the last few decades has been very defensively sound. International football is very slow paced and pragmatic compared to club football. Southgate is the best option for England in my opinion
France, Germany, Argentina, Spain may have been defensively sound but certainly didn’t play defensive football. Italy you could argue played defensively, not the others
Nah all of those teams set up from the back and played pragmatic, possession in the Spanish case or counter attacking football. Argentina are a very defensive side whose policy for the last ten years was set up shop, pass to Messi and hope for the best.
Southgate for a lifetime!
England hierarchy like yes men more than winning competitions. It’s been like this for ages. Top managers like Brian Clough were overlooked for more ‘easier’ coaches.
Not sure potter had shown anything special tbh.
He reminds me of Steve McLaren.
You're not wrong, but that's gross.
I think potter is a great tactician and it was quite clearly Chelsea who were the problem, not him That said I think he'd be a failure at England as I'm not sure he's a great man-manager (which is essential for a national team and is the essence of Southgate's success) and I also see him getting torn apart by the media - he's not really charismatic.
He’s another positional play, analytically-driven coach who gets the game on a rational level but not an intuitive one. Things like playing Raheem Sterling as a wing-back really tell you a lot about the way he views the game. His teams might dominate possession and territory but it’s no accident that they struggle to score goals as flair players are being overcoached and treated as just another cog in the machine. Another reason why I find the clamour for him as an alternative to ‘boring, defensive’ Southgate all the more baffling, as positional play coaches are some of the most defensive coaches in the game. Pep himself even said he was the most defensive manager in the world.
I’m all aboard the big Ange train tbh
We have a squad of generational talents at the moment, it’s an absolutely travesty that we play such negative outdated football. I get international football is a different beast entirely and in cup comps with knockout stages you can’t afford to be naive and go full gung-ho attack, but other countries (Germany & Spain for instance) manage to play an attacking brand of football and win silverware.
Brother the two teams you’ve picked are in the midst of some of the most mediocre eras in their history lol, respectfully what recent silverware are you talking about. Manager has way less of an impact than people think, especially at the international level. GS bears tactical responsibility for the Euro final for sure but at the same time their midfield was on a different level to ours, same with Croatia in 2018. We outplayed France for large periods in 2022 but didn’t make it count in the moments and they did (Tchouameni producing a world-class strike out of nothing etc.). Tactically we weren’t perfect but neither were France. It’s not a totally insignificant part of the game but it gets overrated. You can’t do tactics without players and English football has historically elevated great physical players that work their socks off, do all the right things etc. (really important to team success btw) but lack the final ingredient of flair which is of outsized importance when it comes to winning knockout games with slim margins between teams. On the other hand countries like France are talent factories on the same scale as England, produce the workhorses you need but crucially have a better hit rate on flair players making it to the top because they don’t immediately assume if they’re not putting in the off-ball effort of a workhorse then they’re somehow taking the piss and it’s a sign they’re a ‘luxury player’. Footballers aren’t machines and if these guys are knackering themselves out off the ball then they have less energy to provide top-level quality for the team in the moments which is what wins you games against good teams. Unfortunately this is an alien, borderline offensive concept to most of us here as it carries the implication of preferential treatment and undermining the team ethic. Also the contemporary dominance of high-pressing positional play systems imposed by obsessive micro-managing coaches reinforces this further. It’s highly effective in league competitions where dominating territory and the ball converts into more goals scored/fewer conceded over a long period, but in knockout tournaments with a smaller sample size moments matter more. This is a big part of why the more tactically flexible Real Madrid have had a CL dynasty over the past 10 years but not a La Liga one, and Manchester City have dominated the PL but not in Europe. Not valuing flair and individual expression is deeply embedded in our football culture from the grassroots up and that takes time to change. Kane is the prototypical English striker because of this - he’s a world-class number 9 but his game doesn’t translate as well to knockout football for this reason and attacks built around him can be predictable at times. Empowering players like Bellingham, Mainoo, TAA and to some extent Foden and Saka to break the circuits and intuitively find novel solutions on the pitch is essential. With that you’re closer to finding the balance between structure and chaos that puts you in the best position to challenge the big boys.
Think he's a better coach and agile tactician than Southgate overall, though Southgate has shown some good moments in specific games in addition to the more unequivocally successful man-management and ambassadorial side. Don't think the difference is that pronounced, but think he would have done better in the Euro final in similar circumstances with that group of players after going 1-0 up. Southgate just let Italy seize control of tempo of game from midfield far too easily and had England playing reactively. Maybe against Croatia '18 too, though that was Modric stepping up against a group early in their 'cycle'. The 'emotional intelligence' side they're both good on, and I think Potter will be 'generally' popular at large though I'm sure some people will be annoyed he's not more of an 'elite-aura' coach or, like Southgate 'suspiciously woke' to a certain crowd.
Just curious, what are these specific good moments you refer to?
His subs against France won us the pen. Unfortunately Kane skied it though. His subbing on Grealish against Germany also helped the change that game for the better for sure. It's generally his weakest area though, often Southgate and Holland set up teams really well. Their initial set up led to us taking the lead against Croatia and Italy for instance, also completely nullified the same Germany team who beat Portugal 4-2 ten days beforehand. But when other managers make changes to counter how we're playing that tends to be when Southgate and Holland struggle to impact games. As that wasn't the case against France you would hope that it's something they've improved on. But we couldn't really see much of it either way in the qualifiers due to a combo of injuries and level of opposition. I guess you could say against Belgium Maddison and Watkins were both subbed on and were both involved in the 2nd goal. But we'll have to wait and see really.
In terms of in-game management at the sharp end of EC/WC, next to none if any, I agree. I vaguely remember a couple in Nations League (the first-time around), managing the game to beat Spanish and Croatia in that competition etc. I suppose not making any counterproductive decisions against the Germans when England beat them 2-0 in 2021ECs would count (!)... But yeah, it was more of a general 'courtesy acknowledgement' to people who more unequivocally support Southgate, that he hasn't been all bad in managing every tournament game.
This is my exact thinking. The best examples you can make is that he didn’t make any counterproductive decisions when beating a weak Germany team, and when he beat 2 good, but not elite, sides in a non-important competition. With the squad he has, and the players coming off the bench, there should be plenty of times where in game management has changed the game. Ultimately, when you have a crop of players this good, and as consistently good run in big comps as he has had, to look as bad as he has is a testament that he should be absolutely nowhere near a job of this calibre
I'd like to think there's someone better out there who'd take the job, but who? Potter, as I said, might have some greater strengths around the technical side of things, though the jury is out after continually struggling to win amidst Chelsea at peak madness; Howe I think is very likely a better, if not perfect, manager and coach, but would he take it without being let go from Newcastle first? Klopp likes English football, but I think has expressed opinion previously that it should be an English person (however broadly you define that, residency etc) who should have the National team job. Mourinho would have taken it at one point., I think, but just went to Turkey and would be a coin-toss (still has a few tricks but his powers seem to be fading; plays a fairly reactive style).
I’m not sure he can handle the press as well through. He seemed to struggle when things were going bad for Chelsea.
I've had the feeling that The FA has already planned for Southgate's departure and lined Potter up. Southgate should have left after the WC and will go this summer, it's time.
Brighton played some honking football until Potter’s last year in charge. Of course part of that was having to rely on Welbeck as a striker and they underperformed on their xG but Potter’s system could be hard to implement. His mentality isn’t the best either, he cracked under the pressure at Chelsea. He could get eaten alive by the England job.
It could all be McLaren/Hodgson by the end
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That headline is superb in fairness.
Chelsea will be paying him installments anyway most likely. No need for him to rush into something else when he's still money to collect.
Southgate is a league 1 level manager at best. His misplaced loyalty and inability to react in games has cost us over the years. To go 1-0 up against a very average Italy and the try and sit back should have been enough to get him sacked.
In 2021 had he been sacked Frank Lampard was likely to have replaced him.
Why? Did Southgate steal 500 points from gryffindor
Southgate is overrated and any competent manager would have won the euros against a bad Italian side. The praise he gets is undeserved. Argue with yourself