Typical Chelsea management to sack coaches pretty quickly...creates chaos not seen at many other clubs and which is why we cannot maintain any success. Never any cohesive strategy, just buy, buy players and mismanage the ton of youth players on loan. We had Lukaku, De Bruyne, and Salah at different times but never given chance to play enough, now look at them. New coach coming in has a really good background and success at Napoli so we will see. Chelsea stuck in Europa league and offers being rumored for both Hazard and Willian. If they sell Hazard I will start digging the grave for the team now. With no Champions League and Chelsea still lagging behind Man City, ManU and Liverpool on quality Hazard might bolt . We scored shit last season and have lost our attack so Chelsea on verge of falling further than the 5th place we luckily eked out...
Sorry to hear 85. Lack of following a consistent strategy can take teams apart even if they have all the talent they need. Hope you guys make it back, always enjoyed seeing Chelsea play. For now I see MC dominating the PL, unless MU can come up with something new. I haven't followed player exchanges closely, so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds..
Both teams expected to unload their bench. Kane might not play because he has Golden Boot locked up unless Lukaku starts over Batshuyai...
Croatia had the better of play for 80% of the game. Just couldn’t finish. France has so many explosive players. Give them a sliver of space and it’s in the net. Fantastic WC overall I think. The rest of the world is quickly catching up to the Brazil’s, Germany’s, etc.
Yes Croatia outplayed France so much with brilliant attacks and passing but so unlucky...an OG and a random penalty puts them in the hole 2 goals to 1 and then France depth/experience takes over. Great game. Euro 2020 is going to be a blast with France, Belgium, England, Germany, Croatia and Spain.....
England's strategy was the same as for years and years now - play to not lose, don't play to win. This means running at your opponent with the ball until he fouls you, then you can try to score form the free kick or penalty. Preferably you get a penalty, because its harder to miss a penalty than an open field shot. Plus, if the penalty is saved or hits the post, there's no play on, the defending side can't sweep up the rebound and return it for a quick strike. So if you get one goal, that's enough. Which is why so many England matches over the years have gone to penalties, because they are usually low-scoring (and boring). The shame isn't that we have lost so many penalty shoot-outs, it is that we have been in so many penalty shoot-outs in the first place. This is also why we have often lost to weaker teams. England was the same team with the same ideas, just different faces at each position. Same game, same result.
England has been pretty ineffective recent history so this World Cup was a nice surprise due to finally letting the youth run free. 2014 - lost to Italy and Uruguay in group stage and knocked out 2010 - draw to U.S. and barely qualified finishing 2nd behind U.S. in group and facing Germany in next round losing badly. Finishing 2nd behind U.S. as akin to losing to the U.S. 2006 and 2002 losing in knockout stages after coming out of group unconvincingly both times. 2002 to 2010 was the era of Beckham, Lampard, Gerrard, Ashley Cole and a carousel of crappy strikers in Rooney, Hesky, Michael Owen etc.. These became old slow and really beatable teams. There was a long downturn which was turn around by the new youth movement Southgate ( he left off many older players and those who made it were left on the bench (Cahill for example). This was a faster more active team. BUT I do agree the tactics are still so-so and I believe it is still because lack of world class talent. There is no dynamic attack, it is cross and set pieces. No one on that team is at the same level as those players on France, Belgium and even Croatia despite England making it to final 4. The youth movement added more speed and pace which led to more goals and attack but talent eventually wins out. England is void of the type of player Brazil, Germany, France, etc always seems to find. I think this was a nice jump but we will see England get taken down a notch in Euros 2020 and next World Cup they will have a much tougher time ( they should qualify because in the qualifying rounds they play shit teams).