useless.
So England losing to German in a friendly will have no bearing on anything that’ll happen in the rest of Southgate’s reign.
Nothing was learned or even gained from beating Germany three times in a row on their own soil, nothing will be learned or gained from a defeat that the hosts played as a testimonial to some who is retiring.
Yes there was a new system, yes some who were overlooked under Roy got a start and there was new faces. But it was all just too meaningless to matter. Especially with England playing in some respects in the same way that got them turned over at tournaments.
England can’t do the playing it out from the back. They just can’t. Players like Cahill, Smalling and Hart are just not up to it. Now I kept hearing how from Hoddle how England were pressing the Germans while they weren’t doing it to those in blue. Well they certainly pressed England’s defence, pressed them into trouble. While it was only sporadic pressing of the German ‘keeper and central defenders from Vardy and co.
Hart to Smalling to Cahill back to Smalling, back to Cahill, back to Hart… Hart kicks it into touch.
The Germans push up onto those three, those three panic and the ball is lost. It happened at the Euros, it happened last night, it’ll keep happening. They’re not good enough for the slow build up. Quick play, yes they can do that, though again last night the number of times when quick play was required and someone – yes I’m looking at you Walker – stopped it in it’s tracks. Lallana was also guilty on a few occasions.
But Walker, dear god, any time he has to think about a situation you know it’s dead in the water.
England could have won it, probably should have, they just fluffed the very few clean cut chances – looking at Lallana and Dele here – the Germans did very little and the winning goal, well while you eulogise the old bloke whose testimonial it was, just look at how Cahill completely ponces out of trying to prevent the shot reaching the goal. Utterly pathetic.
All in all it was just a meaningless result in a meaningless game…