Southgate - England's best manager?

BoroMart

BoroMart

Well-known member
Now I've seen a lot of anti-southgate nonsense in the last year, despite this being at worst our second best calendar year.

- Qualified for world cup with best attack and best defence
- lost a UERO final only on penalties
- Won 14, drew 5 Lost 0 (excluding penalty results which just isn't football)
- 52 goals scored in a calendar year
- 14 clean sheets
- and no one managed to score 2 against us
- all while bedding in youthful and inexperienced players, setting us up for a very bright future (U23 players used: Saka, Bellingham, Foden, Smith-Rowe, James, Rice, Sancho all replacing players like Dier, Rose, Lingard etc.)
- breaking records as manager of the England team with most competitive wins, most competitive goals, most competitive cleansheets
- and of course revenge over croatia and a knockout win against Germany

The future is very, very bright
 
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BoroMart said:
Now I've seen a lot of anti-southgate nonsense in the last year, despite this being at worst our second best calendar year.

- Qualified for world cup with best attack and best defence
- lost a UERO final only on penalties
- Won 14, drew 5 Lost 0 (excluding penalty results which just isn't football)
- 52 goals scored in a calendar year
- 14 clean sheets
- and no one managed to score 2 against us
- all while bedding in youthful and inexperienced players, setting us up for a very bright future (U23 players used: Saka, Bellingham, Foden, Smith-Rowe, James, Rice, Sancho all replacing players like Dier, Rose, Lingard etc.)
- breaking records as manager of the England team with most competitive wins, most competitive goals, most competitive cleansheets
- and of course revenge over croatia and a knockout win against Germany

The future is very, very bright
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Hard to argue with that - he’s doing a great job. Some just still lazily compare him to the novice manager who got sacked here.

Thank goodness fat Sam is bent.
 
I agree Mart. It's he or most successful manager? Most would say not because he is yet to win a trophy. He is the best in my lifetime.

I suspect those who critisizing him just don't like him.

People discussing his team selection is just part of football. Not holding your hands up at the end of the game... Not so much.
 
I agree

He was taking a lot of flack for poor in-game management for the Euro final, and I do think some was warranted, there was obvious changes needed, but at the end of the day we only lost on penalties to the most impressive team at the tournament. Far more decorated managers have lost finals too, it’s part of the game.

But if people actually focus on the overall job and not one half of a final, nobody can say he hasn’t done an incredible job when you look at how bad we were in tournaments in 2014 and 2016.
 
The international setup sites Southgate as a deep thinker who is more concerned with building something rather than the next game. He gets time with England that he may not get with a club.

We should have stuck with him and let him build here.

If he goes to club management he would need to be given the same space to build a legacy.
 
He hasn't won anything so no, he is not Englands best manager.

He's getting close but I fear he will always bottle it at the final hurdle by overthinking. Unfortunately I thing Gareth may fall into the Tim Henman / Devon Loch / Jimmy White category.

I would love to be proved wrong but if you can't get an in form team, with a great bench, leading 1- 0, at home over the line to win the EURO final then there's something lacking.
 
He would have to win the World Cup to surpass Alf Ramsay, but if he did lead England to victory in Qatar, he would undoubtedly be the best of all time for me.

No manager is beyond criticism but those that want Southgate out have impossibly high standards. For example, he is written off as second rate because we lost the final to Italy, but top managers often lose finals at the highest level (look at who has lost a Champions League final over the past 11 seasons - Pep, Tuchel, Pochettino, Klopp x2, Allegri x2, Simeone x2, Heynkes and Ferguson). There is no reason why Southgate should not improve as a manager for the experience this summer and take us across the final hurdle next time around.

The other criticism he gets is for being too defensive. Yet aside from the fact we score more goals than pretty much anyone else in International football, we also play in similar formations to the top club sides in Europe. On Friday we lined up exactly like Chelsea do week in week out and were 5-0 at half time, but those who criticised his selection pre-match did not eat humble pie, they simply changed the argument to an u-20 side could have beaten Albania.

Southgate keeps proving his critics wrong but the silent minority that don't like him will never be won over. I guess that will always be the case whoever is England manager (you can't please all of the people all of the time) but I cannot think of any English manager who could have done a better job over the past few years or is likely to do so over the next few years.
 
I think he's done well overall but needs to be braver when it really matters if he's going to go that one step further and win a tournament.

Against Italy, it was obvious he needed to change it. They had us pinned back in our own half and we couldn't counter attack effectively, as we had no outlet. The obvious change to make at the time was Saka for Mount but I don't think he wanted to change it because we were winning.
 
BoroMart said:
He's close despite not winning a trophy. I mean a penalty shoot out difference between his highs and Ramseys....but then Ramsey failed to qualify for tournaments twice.
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I think he is the most successful mart. Some would need to see a tournament win to agree.

Look at where we were before he took over the national team and how we had performed for years prior. The amount of improvement is astounding.
 
WilliamMunny said:
The other criticism he gets is for being too defensive. Yet aside from the fact we score more goals than pretty much anyone else in International football, we also play in similar formations to the top club sides in Europe. On Friday we lined up exactly like Chelsea do week in week out and were 5-0 at half time, but those who criticised his selection pre-match did not eat humble pie, they simply changed the argument to an u-20 side could have beaten Albania.
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Yes, I really don't get this too defensive criticism when we score so many goals. We also dominate possession. I think the general armchair england 'fan' lacks a cultural understanding of the game. They want blood and thunder football like 1980s League One, but forget that when we have tried that at international level it simply doesn't work. They want players and managers to work harder not smarter....and that leads to results like Graham Taylor had. The other thing is falling for the clamour for all the superstars to be shoehorned in, even if not fit (Grealish in euros), but we've been down that road with the golden generation and it was a mess.

I get the feeling that had we beaten Italy, these fans would still be complaining for southgate out now, and would claim Italy never showed up, italy lost their bottle or any other excuse to denigrate the job southgate has done.
 
It's all a learning process. In order to win semi-finals you invariably also have to lose them. Likewise with a final. Hopefully we have learnt from the Italy game and it will stand us in better stead the next time around.

For what it's worth I think Gareth is doing a great job. He has the squad fighting for one another not between themselves, no one thinks they are better than the manager and takes their place in the starting 11 for granted. He has a bunch of highly paid, egotistical, testosterone filled young men under control and doing as he asks without fail.. who was the last England Manager to achieve that!
 
Laughing said:
I think he is the most successful mart. Some would need to see a tournament win to agree.

Look at where we were before he took over the national team and how we had performed for years prior. The amount of improvement is astounding.
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the other argument of course is he should be winning because he has amazing players, of course he managed many of these young players in the U21s and setup the England DNA programme to ensure at grassroots and youth elite level we produce players of the right caliber. I think that is his greatest success, because it could keep us in the top 6 countries for the next 2 or 3 decades.
 
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