and expecting a different outcome thing already.
Another Continuity Southgate display from Tuchel and his England side as they bored their way to another underwhelming victory over the might of Latvia.
After watching Rashford being useless for 75 minutes, Tuchel decided he needed to see more of him and gave him another 80 minutes of being rubbish.
Tuchel thankfully did make changes from the borefest of the Albania game for the visit of a team some 75 places before the previous opponents. Thankfully Walker and Foden were absent from the starting XI, though regretfully not missing from the whole game. A new right side brought the best bits from England.
Unfortunately the ball seemed to be down the left aside more than the right. From there Rashford stunk the place out. As he repeatedly hit the first defender with attempted crosses. If he wasn’t doing that he was either floating the ball into the keeper’s hands, or just kicking the ball out of play. Alongside him Bellingham wasn’t much better, certainly not as good as he thought he was. While Skelly was missing.
A telling moment for Bellingham came just before the break when he was about to slide the ball into the box for Kane. He then seemed to have second thoughts, would he really want to give Kane a good chance like that. Baulked, stumbled then fouled the Latvian. He followed it up later with a challenge that should have seen him red carded.
By now England had gone ahead thanks to a free-kick which Skelly won by jumping into a player and throwing himself to the floor. Not the last time he’d do that in the game. It wasn’t a foul. But it certainly was a hell of a free-kick from the returning Reece James.
I’ve criticised James before in an England shirt, maybe that was just him under Southgate, where he got forward a lot but passed everything back. Here there was crosses there was play with Bowen and Rogers. Link up play and end product that was missing from the left. The most telling moment came from a throw in. He threw it forward to the “offside” Bowen. A throw going forward, it’s just an alien concept to Walker, especially one in a good attacking area. And I seriously doubt Walker knows you can’t be offside from a throw.
Tuchel’s response to seeing Rashford not working was to swap the wingers at the break. So now we had Rashford not working on the right and Bowen not being as good from the left. So Tuchel’s reaction to this was of course to bring Bowen off and keep Rashford on. He then finally took Bellingham off, to protect him from that second yellow but for Foden. God knows why. With it though there was more from Rice in midfield, getting forward a bit more, without Bellingham demanding to be the centre of attention.
Rogers waited for Rice to make the run to the byline, his cross was met by Kane at the back post for his customary goal – he now has 71 goals, the same total as Alan Shearer and Michael Owen combined, in 47 fewer games. A third was added from Eze, who had replaced Bowen. He danced about in the box, before taking a shot that didn’t look to be going anywhere near goal until it took a massive deflection.
It was a better display, against a worse team, who could have taken an early lead thanks to some typical Pickford stupidity – I mean you can say a keeper is bored and wants to get involved but that early on – but a better display that was disrupted by Tuchel’s changes, when he could have enhanced things he spoiled them.
Now if he sticks with this same group of players by the next group of games then we know how this is going to pan out… it all looks very Southgate…