Goonersworld

im back baby

still cant believe we took sterling off that early, cost us the game

DiamondGooner wrote:We did the same against Columbia went 1-0 up then just sat back and let them back into the game.

We needed to capitalise in the first half and we didn't, practically gave the game away by letting their midfield into the game.

Such a mistake and such a shame, we dominant for the first 40mins then they got lazy and ceded momentum, maybe scoring early wasn't a good thing, we got too comfortable.

The #1 culprit was Kane. He should have made it 2-0. There is really not much of an excuse. Then Lingard made an utter mess of a shot that would never happen with a top player.

Players just not talented enough to win against any decent team - by decent I mean average at this level, which Croatia are.
Simple as that really.

Sims wrote:im back baby

still cant believe we took sterling off that early, cost us the game

Whatever slim chance we had when we arrived was dashed because Sterling was on the plane.

jayramfootball wrote:

Sims wrote:im back baby

still cant believe we took sterling off that early, cost us the game

Whatever slim chance we had when we arrived was dashed because Sterling was on the plane.

after pickford and maguire he was our best player

he was the only one causing any problems to our opposition in open play. apart from him there was nothing, kane & dele no shows throughout

Sterling was very good yesterday, agree it was a big blow, i don't want to be to critical on southgate but tactically he was poor yesterday, not bringing on a high energy player to cover the wings and not having a ball player like shelvey/wilshere there killed us.

Marsbar100 wrote:Sterling was very good yesterday, agree it was a big blow, i don't want to be to critical on southgate but tactically he was poor yesterday, not bringing on a high energy player to cover the wings and not having a ball player like shelvey/wilshere there killed us.

Tbh I don't blame Southgate, he didn't want to make any rash changes to what he saw was his best side.

The issue was his best side has had it too easy, when have they had to really fight for a game? only time they had it tough they got by on penalties not won in normal time.

It looked to me like the team stopped being competitive around the 40th min and this let Croatia get going.
Once Croatia's superior midfield got their flow going and we just kept hoofing it up, it was only a matter of time.

They were still closing down our defenders and midfielders in extra time ffs that's how much they wanted to win.
We scored an early goal patted ourselves on the back then thought the game was over come 40mins.

Very astonishing, because I couldn't believe we were the far better team for the 1st half, Croatia looked all out of sorts and couldn't penetrate our defence, if we had kept that up we'd be in the finals no doubt.

Croatia didn't get better, we gave up competing and fell apart, they probably couldn't believe their luck ........ that's what so disappointing.

"We scored an early goal patted ourselves on the back then thought the game was over come 40mins."

i wondered @ the time whether scoring so early was potentially problematic... the whole sitting back thing... lose that edge

We gave it to them first half we didn't sit back, we gassed though a lot harder than them, why i don't know, maybe we just put so much into the first half, maybe because we was a lot less experienced we burned far more nervous energy

Losmeister wrote:"We scored an early goal patted ourselves on the back then thought the game was over come 40mins."

i wondered @ the time whether scoring so early was potentially problematic... the whole sitting back thing... lose that edge

Same, but would obviously still rather be 1-0 up after 5 mins. Problem was that we didn't take the chance when we were all over them first 20-30 mins.

Sims wrote:im back baby

still cant believe we took sterling off that early, cost us the game

Curse of the Simslad.

Curse of Southgate being a rubbish manager morelike

Curse of Raheem Sterling being shit more like