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European U-21 Championship

I was at the game. Typical England performance. Excellet support from Swedish fans and decent number of Spurs flags and shirts around the stadium.

Alex was great. Carroll's performence was disappointment, he didnt create enough. Harry looked tired and he really needs some proper rest before new season. Even though his performance was solid.
 
I managed to find the first half online. I can't believe the state of the English back line, especially as we are meant to be trying to play a possession game. Garbutt, Moore, Gibson and Butland have so little confidence on the ball and misplace passes so often. The Swedish press worked as well as it did because our back line couldn't 10 yrd passes to one another without 1 in 3 being inaccurate. Chalobah has terrible control too, consistently loses it under his own feet with his first touch and fires short passes at 100mph to his team mates.
 
England Under-21s: Butland; Jenkinson, Gibson, Stones, Garbutt; Chalobah, Forster-Caskey; Redmond, Ings, Lingard; Kane.

Italy U21: Bardi; Zappacosta, Rugani, Romagnoli, Biraghi; Benassi, Crisetig, Cataldi; Berardi, Trotta, Belotti
 
Poor first half from England. The 2-0 flatters Italy, but not by much.

It just looks like they've 2 more players on the pitch, as we are so slow to move and/or pass while their blokes move around quite effectively.
 
at least Harry will get an extra break. Absolute waste of his time being amongst this shower of sh!t
 
I cant say Im surprised at the exit. I have watched all three games and we have been shocking in all of them.

I dont believe Luke Garbutt is the best English U21 left back, if he is England are in crisis! I dont want to be hard on a kid but Jesus wept, he cant cross a ball, he cant tackle, he cant take players on. I cant get over how brick he is, to think he will be playing in the premier league next season all be it at a team that will properly be fighting relegation.

Butland is another overrated player he never comes of his line, I will guarantee he turns out to be another very average english keeper. Ian Walker 2.0

Ings I think we dodged a bullet there, the lad works hard, but his finishing looks poor, he's first touch is poor, another very average English player.

Stones, Jenkinson and Harry looked different class to the rest of the England team, I doubt they will play another minute at U21 level.
 
What a great experience the latter stages of this tournament could have offered to those young players, but it's another wasted opportunity. The FA will still be happy as they have their yes-men in Southgate and Hodgson.
 
U21 level is a waste of time tbh.
Most countries promote their talented young players into the senior squad for experience.
Countries like England will always get easily to any tournament with their second tier young players better than smaller counties second tier young players.
 
Cochise said:
I managed to find the first half online. I can't believe the state of the English back line, especially as we are meant to be trying to play a possession game. Garbutt, Moore, Gibson and Butland have so little confidence on the ball and misplace passes so often. The Swedish press worked as well as it did because our back line couldn't 10 yrd passes to one another without 1 in 3 being inaccurate. Chalobah has terrible control too, consistently loses it under his own feet with his first touch and fires short passes at 100mph to his team mates.
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So just like the senior team then. Nothing will change until we teach our kids to treat the ball like a friend and not an enemy. It will take years to come to fruition just as it did for Germany. Luckily a lot of dinosaurs like Graham Taylor and Martin O'Neill are becoming less frequent. I do not play football on a Sunday anymore because it is all about how quickly you can get the ball forward, the midfield are almost always bypassed unless it's played down the channels for the wingers to chase aimlessly.
 
England are never gonna do anything at u21 unless they pick the best players available at that age group in tournaments.

Butland
Carl Jenkinson, Calum Chambers, Phil Jones, Luke Shaw
Oxlade-Chamberlane, Wheelchair, Ross Barkley, Sterling
Harry Kane, Saido Berahino

You cant expect to win a tournament with your second tier players.
 
I know it's not the right route to go along, but the loss of Berahino was fairly major in our failings to support Kane. Berahino was a player I'd have liked to see Spurs sign, purely because of his awareness to make the most of the space that Kane makes and to run beyond Kane. Without him Southgate had few alternatives and hardly any players to share the goal threat. As such we ended up in the first game playing in an old fashionned 451 from 10 years ago when English coaches first tried a three man midfield, playing with two wingers and an isolated front man. Against Sweden Pritchard gave us something different in that he spent more time ghosting infield and trying to work off of Kane, whilst Hughes also got into the opponents box. Southgate's decision to try something different tonight was probably more out of desperation than anything else (he's favoured a 433 for most of the qualifying process), but he should probably take some of the blame for playing without a creative force in the middle.

All in all, I echo nearly everything that has been said in here. We should definitely bring more experienced players along, certainly in defence where CB looked weak as did Garbutt (Chambers was in the squad but looks to be 4th choice for Southgate this tournament), but I reckon that a lot of that is because both their clubs and the players feel they are above the U21 setup. From this current batch I'd say that only Jenkinson and Pritchard could come away with anything as the rest looked poor, Kane included. I'll also add that Butland has a brick load of work to do if he ever wants to become England's #1, completely over-hyped and looks like he hasn't developed at all since his breakout season.

Edit: I'll add in Loftus-Cheek too, a player I didn't think had earned a shot at the squad. Was way better than any of the other midfielders that we took with us and should've displaced Chalobah in the team.
 
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Like i have said in the past, its the next generation of players that we need to hope will turn us into an above average side. The under 19's / 18's.
 
Yiddo said:
Like i have said in the past, its the next generation of players that we need to hope will turn us into an above average side. The under 19's / 18's.
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theres nothing much wrong with the current generation of u21-u23 players. its just that our best ones didnt play in this tournament.
 
Yes, Jenkinson looked positive and good when going forward, but the defence was pretty inept. He is a number 2, so first duty to and will be judged accordingly.

One other thing, we mainly went forward on the left. Was it due to that being our strong side, or a perceived weakness in the oppoition?.

I really saw this at its worst against Norway, and froze the screen (didn't save it, unfortunately). At one point we had 8 players within 10 yds of the side-line, with none of them nearer than 15yds to either box. The other two outfield players were in their centre circle and just outside ours.

Width anyone ?
 
Obviously I might feel differently if I was English. But I'm not... so I'm absolutely delighted Kane and Carroll will get some extra time off before pre-season. Sorry folks.
 
Whilst Premier League teams continue to support the growth of overseas players at U18 and U21 level England will never improve. Excluding Spurs the other teams in the top 6 supplied as many players to the other nations as they did to the England U21 squad.
 
camspur said:
Whilst Premier League teams continue to support the growth of overseas players at U18 and U21 level England will never improve. Excluding Spurs the other teams in the top 6 supplied as many players to the other nations as they did to the England U21 squad.
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Maybe more of our players should take a risk and go abroad for a season or two or drop down a division and work their passage properly? Money apart there must be opportunities for hard-working, dedicated skilful young players to get game time elsewhere.

Whilst having 'all' these overseas talents presumably limits some playing time for some youngsters, the quality of player that these young players are training with or competing against is presumably higher and therefore our top top young talent should be making progress by being up against them?

Still think it is probably down to not providing better coaching at U14 downwards level so our players generally still don't have a scoobies what to do with the ball.
 
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