Southgate - England's best manager?

BoroMart said:
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.
Click to expand...
You're right with your last sentence. The opposite may also have been true has things gone wrong for Southgate, see Warnocks defenders.

It's footie, it's opinionated and its great for just that reason.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
He's doing a grand job, he does have the best squad of players I've ever seen available to an England manager, but he's not afraid to ignore the press when it comes to team selection. A good trait to have.

Hopefully he learns from his past errors when it comes to the crunch games.
Click to expand...
He has a very good squad, the best, not in my lifetime he doesn't. Any squad he has, he is largely responsible for bringing them through the youth setup so he has to take some credit for that too.
 
I was thinking about the quality of squad he had in comparison to the 2006 World Cup side - arguably the pinnacle of the 'Golden Generation'.

The positions are different as this current England side have never played 4-4-2 and the one back then did almost exclusively. If we were, for argument's sake, playing 4-3-3 - my thoughts are:

Cole, Terry and Ferdinand all make the starting XI easily.

One of Gerrard and Lampard in the midfield three.

After that I think it's all the current lads. You could make a case for playing Rooney out of position out wide in the front three or for Hargreaves instead of Phillips.
 
Glover_elbow said:
Englands best manager maybe, one of boro's worst managers for sure.
Click to expand...

This is, oddly, one of the reasons I think he'd such a good fit for England. He's willing to learn and has obviously improved hugely as a coach since 2009. He's also learned a lot since 2018 in how he sets up a team. He still has shortcomings as a coach, but he's aware of them and international management gives him the space to address them.
 
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
Click to expand...
It's a good point that we've done all that whilst bringing through a load of talent.

It's just as long as the talent can keep replacing or bettering what is going out the door.

My only worry is if Kane gets injured, there's nothing coming through who could come close to matching him, not without changing our style which is working.

Mason Greenwood could be one of the best potential scorers we have, but he needs time up front, as a centre forward as the main striker for his club, never mind the national team. I think him being at Man Utd will end up bad for him, unless when Cavani and Ronaldo go, he's used as their number 1 choice. I don't think that will happen, I think Man Utd will want a "ready" replacement, but well have to see in a year or two. He won't be a CF starter for England until he's a CF starter for his club, and he's got Rashford to contend with too. Rashford will have to stay out wider, but I think that's more natural for him.

Sterling needs to leave City to get game time, and Sancho needs to start playing club football too, a lot of England's secondary forwards are bit players for their club.
 
BoroMart said:
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.
Click to expand...
Yep, agree with this. The national team attracts a hell of a lot of "casual" fans who, it's clear, watch very little football. Was always amazed living in London at the number of people I spoke to who didn't have a club side, they just followed England.

The criticism, erroneously, stems from playing two DMs, without realising that the set up of the other 8 outfield players and the team in general greatly outweighs that decision in terms of importance.

It's probably not been helped by the fact that England set up differently to, and are arguably less attacking than the big hitters of the EPL (City, Liverpool, Utd etc) which the casual fan is most familiar with. Different styles for different teams and different philosophies is all it is - and it should be judged purely on results, which in Gareth's case have been exceptional.
 
Glover_elbow said:
Englands best manager maybe, one of boro's worst managers for sure.
Click to expand...
nowhere near surely.

I mean Strachan and Woodgate were on a different planet Monk, and Bobby Murdoch much worse too.

If you go on win rate, you can add Maddren, Mackie and Bamlett.

If you want to factor in prem vs tier 2, you can add in Rowley, Malcolm Allison and Raich Carter.

You can make a strong argument for 10 worse managers out of 33 permanent managers.
 
Andy_W said:
It's a good point that we've done all that whilst bringing through a load of talent.

It's just as long as the talent can keep replacing or bettering what is going out the door.

My only worry is if Kane gets injured, there's nothing coming through who could come close to matching him, not without changing our style which is working.

Mason Greenwood could be one of the best potential scorers we have, but he needs time up front, as a centre forward as the main striker for his club, never mind the national team. I think him being at Man Utd will end up bad for him, unless when Cavani and Ronaldo go, he's used as their number 1 choice. I don't think that will happen, I think Man Utd will want a "ready" replacement, but well have to see in a year or two. He won't be a CF starter for England until he's a CF starter for his club, and he's got Rashford to contend with too. Rashford will have to stay out wider, but I think that's more natural for him.

Sterling needs to leave City to get game time, and Sancho needs to start playing club football too, a lot of England's secondary forwards are bit players for their club.
Click to expand...
Strikers are where we are a bit light at the moment. if Kane get's injured we would, probably have to change style a bit. he does have 3 years left at the top, minimum. We may well see one of the youngsters improve enough. Greenwood will continue to improve. He may even be ready for the next world cup as a ready stand-in for Kane. He seems to have improved on last season with a 1 in 2 return to date.

Kane can end up playing deep from time to time, which does suggest that the formation might not have to change much.
 
Andy_W said:
My only worry is if Kane gets injured, there's nothing coming through who could come close to matching him, not without changing our style which is working.
Click to expand...
That is true, when you look at strikers under 25 there's DCL, Abraham, Rashford, Greenwood, Solanke, Brewster, Nketiah, it's a bit thin and a long way behind Kane's level.

I can see us playing with a false 9 in 3 years or so
 
If England get to another Semi-Final or better next year, then Southgate must be considered the best, but clearly not the most successful. A World Cup win will be difficult, as I still don't think the players have the belief yet to beat Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Belgium or France in the really important games.
 
Nero said:
If England get to another Semi-Final or better next year, then Southgate must be considered the best, but clearly not the most successful. A World Cup win will be difficult, as I still don't think the players have the belief yet to beat Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Belgium or France in the really important games.
Click to expand...

I disagree about that, as I think 'belief' and changing the 'losing' or 'we're not worthy' mindset is one of Southgate's biggest successes.

I see a team playing without fear and not burdened by previous failures, they seem unphased and actually seem to relish the challenge of the biggest matches. They play like they believe they belong at that top level.

Ok we might have come up slightly short in the final but I don't think the mentality of the players can be questioned, possibly in game management and tactics by the management team. However, that's being hypocritical, Southgate is doing a great job and will learn from these games.
 
theredrooster said:
I disagree about that, as I think 'belief' and changing the 'losing' or 'we're not worthy' mindset is one of Southgate's biggest successes.

I see a team playing without fear and not burdened by previous failures, they seem unphased and actually seem to relish the challenge of the biggest matches. They play like they believe they belong at that top level.

Ok we might have come up slightly short in the final but I don't think the mentality of the players can be questioned, possibly in game management and tactics by the management team. However, that's being hypocritical, Southgate is doing a great job and will learn from these games.
Click to expand...
The World Cup Semi-Final and Euro Final both followed very similar patterns that indicate a lack of belief from the players. That's not bring critical, as it's a high pressure situation and England don't have the collective memory of playing many of those games.

The only possible difference is the likes of Foden didn't play either of those games. He's quickly becoming England's best player and might be the one to win a really big game.
 
theredrooster said:
I disagree about that, as I think 'belief' and changing the 'losing' or 'we're not worthy' mindset is one of Southgate's biggest successes.

I see a team playing without fear and not burdened by previous failures, they seem unphased and actually seem to relish the challenge of the biggest matches. They play like they believe they belong at that top level.
Click to expand...
Totally agree with this. The team seem to have a far better mentality these days. They know what they have to do as individuals and as a team and they trust in the system to work.

They have also learned to be patient and wait for the opportunities to come rather than panicking and changing everything if we aren't ahead after 60 mins.. The Germany game in the Euro's was a classic example of this.. an almost German-like efficient performance against the former masters of the art!

I've never been so engaged with an England squad as I am now with Gareth.
 
Nero said:
The World Cup Semi-Final and Euro Final both followed very similar patterns that indicate a lack of belief from the players. That's not bring critical, as it's a high pressure situation and England don't have the collective memory of playing many of those games.

The only possible difference is the likes of Foden didn't play either of those games. He's quickly becoming England's best player and might be the one to win a really big game.
Click to expand...
Once they had the memory of playing in a semi they immediately went on to win the next one.. lets hope the same applies to a final too!

As I said earlier in this thread, the best teams have to lose Semi-finals and finals if they want to be challenging and eventually go on to win them. It feels like we've come a long way in a short space of time (in a tournament sense)
 
He's definitely in the top two.

I was listening to fans last night suggesting he's only been so successful because of the group of players he has. Er, why wasn't that the case during the 'golden' years of Beckham, Scholes, Gerrard, Lampard etc?

Half of his players aren't doing it at squad level but in an England shirt they are, is that down to the players or the England management...
 
Nero said:
The World Cup Semi-Final and Euro Final both followed very similar patterns that indicate a lack of belief from the players. That's not bring critical, as it's a high pressure situation and England don't have the collective memory of playing many of those games.

The only possible difference is the likes of Foden didn't play either of those games. He's quickly becoming England's best player and might be the one to win a really big game.
Click to expand...
I think it's more that some of the younger players don't have the experience of these games yet. When you've got players like Chiellini with nearly 800 games under his belt and 15 trophies and countless massive games for club and country, we have players like Mount, Phillips, GRealish, Saka that have nowhere near that level of experience of big games. Even Maguire and Kane two key players don't have the experience of most of the italian squad.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
The player development is all down to the clubs. That's where they spend the vast majority of their time and where they learn the game.
Click to expand...
not entirely true, the England DNA is part of the programme of ensuring that there are suitable coaches, coaching the right things int he right way.

Southgate was at the core of that programme to develop the England DNA, it's used by every grassroots coach with a badge, and by every academy coach, and every manager that his taken his badges in the last 8 years or so.

Southgate is fundamental to the transformation to getting more technical players in the english game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top