Slovakia v England, 20th June, 8pm

[Vale on Trent]

Drinkwater would not of changed any of our 3 results in the groups, let's be honest.

Whilst, even if the changes against Slovakia were ridiculous, I really don't think the pattern of the game would have changed much regardless.

 

[Storzy]

As I recall we played 4-3-3 in most of the qualifiers, in no way was it a last minute choice.

We got rid of it though and went with the diamond and then Hodgeson clearly picked his squad on that formation.

As for people saying England having medicore wingers? We do, but are they really going to be any worse than Rashford who will barely play or Milner or Barkely who will hardly get any game time? If we wanted 4-3-3 he had to take some more wingers to give the team some balance.

Germany have only played well in one game and it was when they played an average striker that is no where near as good as the rest of their attacking options, but he bought some balance to them.

Hodgeson doesn't want to revert back to the diamond because he doesn't know where to fit Rooney in there.

 

[MJA]

Hodgeson doesn't want to revert back to the diamond because he doesn't know where to fit Rooney in there.

Hart​

Walker-----Cahill-----Smalling-----Rose

Dier​

Lallana-----Rooney

Alli​

Vardy-----Kane​

 

[Storzy]

That's awful. Lallana and Rooney as box-to-box midfielders?

Rooney's upturn in performance has been because he's sat deep and spread passes around. In a diamond formation that's Dier's position and I'm not sure we're quite ready to play Rooney as DM. I'd be very pleasantly surprised if Rooney had the legs to play box-to-box, but even if he did he wouldn't find it easy to dicate tempo stuck on the left hand side for large chunks of the game.

 

[MJA]

That's awful. Lallana and Rooney as box-to-box midfielders?

Rooney's upturn in performance has been because he's sat deep and spread passes around. In a diamond formation that's Dier's position and I'm not sure we're quite ready to play Rooney as DM. I'd be very pleasantly surprised if Rooney had the legs to play box-to-box, but even if he did he wouldn't find it easy to dicate tempo stuck on the left hand side for large chunks of the game.

Why would we need Rooney to be box to box? Those 2 central players don't need to do the same job - Lallana by his nature will work tirelessly up and down while Rooney in his new role will probably prefer to sit and add protection to Dier whilst also creeping forward while we attack to take up that sort of Scholes edge of the box position. Nor would I expect either of those 2 to be playing fixed to 1 side of the middle and certainly not wide - that is where the roving full backs come in as lets face it the full backs have been one of the big positives of our group performances.

We need to remember that formations have to be flexible in terms of whether we are attacking or defending, in possession or out of possession or in transition between the 2. And players need to be flexible in terms of where they are on the pitch dependent on these factors as well. Just because I have put Rooney on the left side of the middle 2, doesn't mean I would expect him to fix himself to that side of the field - it's more to do with the fact that I would have to type their names on top of each other to put them both bang central

 

[Carver]

Hodgson did fuck up his selection by taking too many strikers and then playing 4-3-3, but let's not pretend Andros fucking Townsend would have made any difference. Sterling is a far better player than him in every way. England are really lacking in wingers and wing forwards, they shouldn't be playing 4-3-3, but Hodgson came to this realisation way too close to the tournament and has reverted to what he's comfortable using.

Townsend plays well whenever he plays for England.