Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.

England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.

bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.

England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.

Scotland beat a team 4-0 so there must still be some terrible sides still out there!

Gingerfinch wrote:

bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.

England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.

Scotland beat a team 4-0 so there must still be some terrible sides still out there!

bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.

England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.

In fairness the point you made could have been validated most of the time, but you picked a tragic week to air it. Not that even I would argue this is indicative, clearly Covid's effect on the calendar has lead to smaller teams doing much better in this set of games. Be a lot of players in top leagues who are totally shagged out.

Got to love England's footballing media though. Declan Rice made not a single pass of attacking note last night, and against a Poland team missing all their quality we laboured to a tight win having shown zero creativity for most of the game; yet apparently Rice's total no show is being billed as a wonder game. Its at odds with the Belgian commentator who bemoaned Southgate's "passive and negative systeem" all game. He at one point gave a quite sobering fact - Declan Rice had completed the most passes in the game, but had not completed a single pass that lead to a chance, nor a single pass that one pass later did so either, or a cross, or a through ball. Bottom line - Declan Rice passes sideways and backwards and was totally useless.

I struggle to see where the hype is. I have seen thee BBC describe him as the "complete midfielder" this morning - he hasnt scored a goal from open play in 3 years (and only 3 career goals full stop), has never got more than one assist per season in the last 4 full seasons as a starter, and his pass completion inside the final third is half the PL average. He is on every conceivable attacking metric totally rubbish. Even DMs in West Ham's team like Boufal and Soucek produce vastly better things with the ball while not giving up defensive product.

He's basically a good CB playing in midfield, who completes loads of passes backwards, but any end product in front of him is as rare as hens teeth. And yet people are talking him up like a 150 million quid transfer. It would be hilarious if a team did break the bank for him

I only watched the first half, with England dominating and playing well, so I went to bed happy that they would easily see off the Polish challenge. I was very surprised therefore to find out that they struggled to win and needed a late goal to do it with everyone thinking that they were lucky. It must have been a poor second half because they were all over Poland like a rash in the first 45.

I thought Rice was impressive in the first half..... cutting out and blocking off every Polish attacking move, but I accept SP's point about his creativity. If England are going to play 2 DM's, which it appears they are, then there is no point in having 2 DM's passing the ball sideways and backwards, which is what Henderson will do all game long, the moment he returns to the side.

I was much happier with what I saw from Sterling in this match. I enjoy watching him with the ball at his feet, turning defenders inside out

Lee Dixon spent the entire first half talking about how good it was to see Stones back in top form and how important he was to England, and then he goes and shoots his team in the foot by giving away the equaliser.... only to half make amends by providing the assist for the late winner

Based on the first half performance, England should have beaten Poland comfortably by at least 3 goals. Until they start to comfortably win games that they dominate they can't be taken seriously as a force in this summer's Euro's

sussexpob wrote:

bigfluffylemon wrote:Minnow comments withdrawn as North Macedonia teach Germany (and me) a football lesson. Hats off.

England make heavy weather of Poland, but 3 from 3, job done. Just. They should qualify comfortably from this group, but then, they usually do, and it means nothing in tournaments.

In fairness the point you made could have been validated most of the time, but you picked a tragic week to air it. Not that even I would argue this is indicative, clearly Covid's effect on the calendar has lead to smaller teams doing much better in this set of games. Be a lot of players in top leagues who are totally shagged out.

Fair enough. Covid seems to have had quite an effect in general, closing the gap between stronger and weaker teams. I wonder if when the pandemic is all over someone will look back at a very large swathe of natural experiments.

One example I read about was to do with home advantage. No one is quite sure exactly what factors cause home advantage, it seems, but someone analysed a bunch of football games where fans had been banned from stadiums for part of a season (I think it may have been in Italy, can't remember), and compared it with the rest of the season. They found that the effects of a crowd cheering you on had a negligible effect on measurable player performance, but did have a measurable effect on the behaviour of referees i.e. referees were slightly but statistically significantly more likely to favour the home side in close calls when there was a crowd, but this effect disappeared without one.

Would be interesting to see that test repeated in a Covid world. It's surely not the only reason for home advantage - as we know, in cricket conditions vary significantly, and in many sports there isn't much effect of referees but there still is some advantage playing at home.

bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.

Martin Keown made an interesting point about this recently. He said the most important thing about playing at home was not the crowds or anything obvious, it was all about knowing the surroundings of the stadium and pitch and how that effected where the team setup physically in the middle. He used the example of the defensive line, saying each Arsenal defender knew pretty much the exact row of seats they needed to line up parallel with on each side of the field to have optimum space between the midfield and defence, and the midfielders would be the same. In his opinion that made a huge amount of difference, and playing away you were more likely to be caught slightly out of position or strikers be able to find space in between the lines, because your idea of the depth and distances were so much less down to reflex, and were guess work.

Maybe its just his opinion, but an interesting one nonetheless.

bigfluffylemon wrote:Fair enough. Covid seems to have had quite an effect in general, closing the gap between stronger and weaker teams. I wonder if when the pandemic is all over someone will look back at a very large swathe of natural experiments

I think that teams with the deep squads are showing up against teams with less depth. City have romped the title as the hard stage of the season came, mostly because their B team could probably challenge or win it, while Liverpool have an excellent A team, but nothing behind it.

I think you see it more in Spain, where all three big teams are at a sort of crossroads of needing to rebuild; Barca got lumped, Athletico got nowhere near Chelsea and Real are still in, but have lost twice to Shakthar Donestk in the group stage. Its clear teams that rely solely on the strength of their A team are underperforming at the moment.

I dont have much sympathy for guys like Klopp moaning about it though. I seen a funny stat that he had made no changes to his match day line up in about 7 straight games, hadnt made a sub before the 85 minute in all those games, yet continually banged on about the need to have 5 subs..... he never used the 3 he had anyway

sussexpob wrote:

bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.

Martin Keown made an interesting point about this recently. He said the most important thing about playing at home was not the crowds or anything obvious, it was all about knowing the surroundings of the stadium and pitch and how that effected where the team setup physically in the middle. He used the example of the defensive line, saying each Arsenal defender knew pretty much the exact row of seats they needed to line up parallel with on each side of the field to have optimum space between the midfield and defence, and the midfielders would be the same. In his opinion that made a huge amount of difference, and playing away you were more likely to be caught slightly out of position or strikers be able to find space in between the lines, because your idea of the depth and distances were so much less down to reflex, and were guess work.

Maybe its just his opinion, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Interesting. I wonder if that could be tested empirically.

bigfluffylemon wrote:

sussexpob wrote:

bigfluffylemon wrote: One example I read about was to do with home advantage.

Martin Keown made an interesting point about this recently. He said the most important thing about playing at home was not the crowds or anything obvious, it was all about knowing the surroundings of the stadium and pitch and how that effected where the team setup physically in the middle. He used the example of the defensive line, saying each Arsenal defender knew pretty much the exact row of seats they needed to line up parallel with on each side of the field to have optimum space between the midfield and defence, and the midfielders would be the same. In his opinion that made a huge amount of difference, and playing away you were more likely to be caught slightly out of position or strikers be able to find space in between the lines, because your idea of the depth and distances were so much less down to reflex, and were guess work.

Maybe its just his opinion, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Interesting. I wonder if that could be tested empirically.

I remember listening to an ex player talking about things like variations in pitch width, how far away the advertising hoardings are from the line and such like, and how that affects the way a team plays, particularly teams that like to attack with, or are vulnerable to a lot of width. Clearly there are many factors at play when it comes to home advantage..... how flat the playing surface is, maybe less important in the top leagues, but perhaps a factor in cup matches against lower league teams

England make their usual ineffective start against a team parking the bus. Something daft like 70odd% possession to England in that half, but all the best chances fell to Hungary and all of them gifted by Rice. England look decent up front, the back 4 are doing their bit, but the 3 in the middle just seem to be handing a 3 man advantage to Hungary which they are using to stick 3 players on Sterling and 2 on Grealish. Mount is just killing every attacking move the moment he touches the ball, Rice is giving the ball away too much leaving Phillips to do a 3 man job pretty much on his own, so it's surprising that Phillips hasn't been more visible.... but he hasn't.

Feels like a big disconnect between the front 3 and the back 4 and GS needs to find a midfield player who can actually link the front and the back together and put him on early in the second half

Interesting that when Grealish was a Villa player he only ever came on late in the second half, if at all, but now that Moneybags City have forked out £100m for him he's straight in the starting side.

England managers always seem to be blindsided by the club a player plays for..... I suppose that's why Phil Jones, Chris Smalling et al actually had England careers

Oh my word what a through ball from Walker. Harry Kane hang your head. Best move of the game by miles

yellow for Rice.... dreadful studs up tackle