A later flurry from England saw their Euros preparations start with a 3-0 victory over Bosnia. But after a first half where they offered little threat, questions are being asked about the depth of Gareth Southgate's squad, and his plans to get the best out of them. Adam Clery picks apart the system and the performance.
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00:00 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and where have I been for the last week?
00:08 Well obviously I've been deathly ill.
00:10 Yeah, I've been off sick ever since the FA Cup final because unfortunately the doctors
00:14 told me that I've come down with a terrible case of Euros fever.
00:19 Or I had anyway up until about like 7.30 last night when I sat down to watch England vs
00:27 Bosnia and yeah, that was really weird.
00:31 Alright so no, of course I'm only joking, it was absolutely fine.
00:36 This was the England XI that Southgate started his first and also penultimate European Championship
00:43 preliminary friendly game or whatever they were calling it with and I would say honestly
00:47 there's about two actual starters for the Serbia game in this XI.
00:52 So as a result it was obviously going to be a little bit disjointed and I've seen the
00:56 word uninspiring used quite a lot and I do also know four separate people who said they
01:02 fell asleep in that first half.
01:03 I might have been one of them.
01:06 But we do these games for a reason my friends.
01:08 Gareth Southgate will have had things he wanted to learn one way or the other from this match
01:13 and I think some things have gone well and some things have not but also it included
01:18 a few things that I think will have surprised him.
01:21 So first up, why were England so limp and anemic and just unthreatening in that first
01:28 half?
01:29 Because the thing is this 4-2-3-1 that England were using against Brazil and against Belgium
01:33 is designed to actually be really open.
01:36 It's supposed to be England with the hand break off.
01:39 If that's one of the criticisms you have of him as a manager, this is supposed to address
01:43 that.
01:44 They play on the front foot, they have a really attacking number 10.
01:46 You shouldn't have what happened last night which is very little.
01:50 But I just want to show you really quickly something we said on this very channel after
01:55 that Brazil game about this system.
01:58 However, and this is what we're really here to talk about, it left England about as defensively
02:05 open as they have ever been under Gareth Southgate.
02:09 And that is because playing this way comes with an inherent risk of all this space being
02:14 left at the back.
02:16 If you want to be this high pressing, you need to stop teams playing in here and England
02:21 did not do that.
02:23 The f***ing god, he's dead handsome that lad isn't he?
02:26 But yeah, anyway, being too open is the problem with this system.
02:30 Like Southgate's previous England sides have always been defensively solid first and then
02:35 tried to do what they could at the other end of the pitch.
02:37 This is that the other way around.
02:38 They're throwing everything forward and they'll just make up the defending as they go along.
02:42 In fact, we actually called that video back in March, the one major problem England need
02:47 to solve before the Euros.
02:49 And that solution seemingly was this.
02:52 I'm just going to stop this right here.
02:54 This is just a regular England attack against the Bosnia game.
02:57 It happened time and time again in that first half.
03:00 What do you notice is wrong about this freeze frame?
03:03 England play against a team that shouldn't really be that much of a threat on the counterattack
03:08 are only committing their four forward players pretty much every time they go forward.
03:13 And against a team that just know you're going to dominate possession, that are happy to
03:17 let you have the ball, that are going to sit back in numbers, that have three centre backs,
03:22 that just leaves them completely, completely outnumbered when they're trying to attack.
03:27 Seemingly England's solution to them being really open playing the system was to make
03:30 sure certain players didn't get caught the wrong side of the ball.
03:34 Gallagher and Alexander-Arnold in particular, their jobs were to sort of sit outside the
03:39 box.
03:40 Gallagher to initiate the counterpress if it gets turned over and Alexander-Arnold to
03:43 recirculate it if it's cleared.
03:45 Very smart.
03:46 And that's, to be honest, a really smart way of doing that.
03:49 It's a good use of both of those players.
03:50 But what you really want to happen in a system, especially where you're going to have Eze
03:54 coming into the centre from wide left and Bowen coming across from wide left on the
04:00 right, is you want both of these full backs to get all the way up and provide that width.
04:05 Then all of a sudden, instead of being outnumbered five to four, you've got six players up there.
04:09 But Kieran Trippier, as attacking as he is, does not have the best engine on him for bombing
04:14 up and down the pitch.
04:15 And Ezri Concert, while he does have a great engine for bombing up and down the pitch,
04:20 isn't defensively minded in such a way that his first thought is to run the line.
04:24 And so during all of these attacks, Concert and Trippier would eventually get involved.
04:29 But I'll just show you their combined pass map from that first half.
04:34 Again, what do you notice?
04:35 It pretty much just stops dead in the final third.
04:38 Trippier does get in once or twice, but by and large, they are completely unable to have
04:43 any incision, to have any penetration, to be an overload, to get round the back.
04:48 Bosnia, by the time they joined in, were compact.
04:51 They were settled.
04:52 They were all like muscular and in a ball, like corned beef.
04:55 Don't get me wrong, they still had chances to go ahead in that first half.
04:59 But the quality England possess in this part of the pitch might just have been enough to
05:03 make something happen.
05:04 But from a purely system standpoint, it just wasn't really giving them enough.
05:08 In fact, actually, I'll give you a more illustrative example, right?
05:11 This is Trent Alexander-Arnold's pass map in that first half.
05:15 Now you can see he's obviously instructed not to get caught ahead of the ball.
05:18 They don't want to leave themselves open to that counter attack.
05:21 So again, his entire involvement almost stops dead at the final third, which again is fine,
05:27 by the way.
05:28 But he's playing a much better side that could hurt them on the counter.
05:30 This would be very well disciplined.
05:31 This would be very intelligent.
05:33 But I just want you to notice how few of these passes actually make it into the final third.
05:39 He gets out onto the right hand side and hits an absolute raker into the box, but nothing
05:44 came of that.
05:45 And he also has one or two more where he just sort of gets it sort of there and out wide
05:49 here as well.
05:50 There's virtually no incision from his passing, again, because Bosnia was so compact.
05:55 Now obviously he did then go to right back in the second half.
05:58 But before that happened, let's just get rid of these first half passes.
06:01 This is every pass he made in the second half before going to right back.
06:06 Now it's not going to look that dramatic on the face of it, right?
06:10 He still isn't physically getting into the final third, even if he is a little bit further
06:13 forward.
06:14 But just look at the proportion of his passes that from this area are forward, that are
06:20 getting into the box or into the channels or just into an area where they can do something.
06:26 The yellow ones here represent chances he created, by the way.
06:28 And I know two of them are just corners, but they still weren't even getting that in the
06:32 first half.
06:33 Likewise, Conor Gallagher in that first half, not a single pass forwards into the final
06:38 third, just sideways and around.
06:41 But again, in the second half, he's got way more freedom afforded to him to drift out
06:46 into the channels a little bit, not necessarily getting stuck just in this area of the pitch,
06:51 trying to lead a counter press if the ball gets turned over.
06:53 They did, say it with me, take the handbrake off a little bit.
06:57 I do hope you like all these Opta pass maps, by the way, because this being an international
07:03 friendly, they are the only free bit of data I can get my hands on today.
07:08 So there will be more.
07:10 That's kind of what this England system boils down to when you try to manage it in game.
07:14 Like it is just a numbers thing, like how many will you commit forward?
07:18 How many will you leave back?
07:20 And you sort of look at this in the first half, nowhere near enough.
07:23 You're not going to do anything.
07:24 And they got this in the second half.
07:27 Like that's that's great.
07:28 That's like eight players all trying to score.
07:31 Now, Gareth Southgate will know that already.
07:33 He'll know that this system and by extension, England's chances at the Euros live and die
07:38 by the decisions you make over how many players you commit forward and how open you leave
07:43 yourself at the back.
07:44 So the question actually is from the Bosnia game.
07:46 What did this tell him?
07:48 What did this performance and the changes you have to make tell him about his players
07:52 and the system?
07:53 Well, for a start, I thought the Trent Alexander-Arnold had an excellent game, right?
07:58 He had more touches than anyone in the England side.
08:00 I think he completed more passes.
08:02 He created more chances.
08:03 He took his goal really, really well.
08:05 But it was a performance that got increasingly better as England's approach changed.
08:10 As they began to open up in that second half and give him more options, I thought his performance
08:14 sort of brought everything together.
08:16 And when they stuck him back at right back, I thought he was excellent getting up and
08:20 down the flank, getting into the box, being an extra man.
08:23 But that being said, in that first half where England were facing such a deep and organised
08:28 low block, which let's face it, they probably will do in all three group games, he was largely
08:33 ineffective.
08:34 He was good at getting on the board.
08:36 He was giving them good possession and good territory, but he wasn't making anything happen.
08:40 So as a result, he now almost certainly will not start any three of those group games.
08:46 Clearly, he was at his best in a more open game, and that might not arrive until the
08:51 knockouts.
08:52 However, on the other side of midfield, I think we can all pretty much guarantee now
08:55 that Declan Rice's starter in that first game is going to be Connor Gallagher.
09:00 Like, I've been saying all season, like when you watch him play for Chelsea, when you look
09:05 at all the numbers, he is England's best midfield option when it comes to off the
09:09 ball work.
09:10 And in a team with so much talent, you do desperately need somebody to do that off
09:15 the ball work.
09:16 And I thought last night against Bosnia, I saw it finally start to click for him in an
09:19 England shirt.
09:20 He won more duels than any other player on the pitch.
09:23 He won more ground duels than any other player on the pitch.
09:26 He was England's most accurate passer in the opposition half.
09:29 He led the way for tackles, for interceptions.
09:32 He was pretty much everywhere across that 90 minutes.
09:35 And I think he allowed every other player in that team to just do what it was they wanted
09:40 to do.
09:41 So straight away, there are two things Gareth Southgate would have been hoping to learn
09:45 from this match.
09:47 Is Trent Alexander-Arnold effective against a really deep, stubborn defence?
09:51 No, not really.
09:52 Can Connor Gallagher be the dog in the England midfield that lets everyone else have fun?
09:56 Yes, he can.
09:58 And there were others across the 90 minutes as well.
10:00 Like, can you trust Ezri Concert who played every single position in the England back
10:04 line?
10:05 Yes, you absolutely can.
10:06 Does Mark Gaye look as dependable and as confident and as reliable in an England shirt as he
10:11 does at Crystal Palace?
10:13 No, he still does not.
10:15 Does Cole Palmer's supreme confidence in his ability come from the fact there's not a single
10:19 thought actually going on in his head that isn't about the video game Fortnite?
10:23 Yes.
10:24 Is Ebru Chiesa absolutely f***ing mint?
10:28 Also yes.
10:29 But one thing I don't think Gareth Southgate will have been expecting to learn from this
10:33 game but now has involves this.
10:37 This is Adam Wharton's pass map from when he came on in like the 60-something minute
10:43 just to have a run around in midfield in that second half.
10:46 And this may sound ridiculous, but I don't think I've seen a player look more instantly
10:53 comfortable in an England shirt than that ever.
10:57 So I have raved about Kobe Maneu on this channel this season precisely because he's the kind
11:01 of player England don't really produce.
11:04 He's calm and he's composed and he's press resistant and he can sort of allow you to
11:08 do things in that build-up phase that we never ever tend to have, right?
11:13 Adam Wharton is the other kind of player we never ever seem to produce.
11:17 His every single instinct when he gets on the ball is just, "How can I move this forward?
11:23 How can I advance this attack?"
11:25 And sometimes that means playing it instantly.
11:27 Sometimes that means holding onto it.
11:29 Sometimes that means giving it back to somebody else so you can move into a better position.
11:34 He played for the majority of that second half and he did so alongside Madison, alongside
11:39 Grealish, alongside Kane, alongside some really established players in this England side and
11:44 did not misplace one single pass.
11:47 He's so just beautifully two-footed.
11:50 He's full of energy.
11:51 He gets around the pitch.
11:52 He reads the game absolutely superbly.
11:53 You probably would have said his name was definitely in those seven that were going
11:57 to get cut from the full squad.
11:58 But now, I don't know how you don't take him.
12:04 But that, my friends, is a problem for Gareth Southgate and not for me yet.
12:08 Anyway, we'll do like a full squad breakdown after the Friday game once they've announced
12:13 who's actually going.
12:14 But yes, until then, I hope you have enjoyed these learnings we have taken from England
12:18 3, Bosnia 0.
12:20 As ever, you can grab me on all the socials, Adam Cleary, CLERY.
12:24 The Euros issue of the mag is in stores now.
12:27 I'm proud of that catch.
12:28 You can get it now.
12:29 It's really good.
12:30 It comes with a wall planner.
12:31 It's delicious.
12:32 If you made it this far in the video, though, could you let me know, please, you're starting
12:36 England 11.
12:37 Just imagine everybody's fit for the first game of the Euros in the comments.
12:41 You can arrange it however you like.
12:42 You can format it however you like.
12:44 I just am trying to get my hands around the balls of consensus, if you will.
12:51 Yeah, that analogy is going to haunt me for a while.
12:53 So I'm going to end the video there.
12:55 I need to go think about what I've done.
12:58 Love you.
12:59 Bye.
12:59 [Air horn]