After days of criticism, England finally put in the sort of performance everyone expected of them against Slovenia. The only problem was that it started in the 89th minute. But with the nation finally getting a look at what an England team with Gordon, Palmer, and Mainoo can do, does Gareth Southgate *have* to start them in the knockouts? Adam Clery looks at the pros and... well, more pros.
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00:00Right then, hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442, and I am assured that had I just
00:09worked a little bit harder in life I could have got a normal person job, but instead
00:14I now have to stand here and talk about that England performance for like 15 minutes.
00:19But that's okay, that's okay, I'm not complaining, I'm not moaning, I'm not looking for any sympathy
00:23because I actually thought that England in that game looked as dangerous, as threatening
00:29as just attacking, as brilliant as they've looked all tournament, for precisely 90 seconds.
00:37Alright, so everyone was like, Gareth, Gareth, please change the system, and Gareth he did
00:44change the system.
00:45England went back to this 4-3-3 that we saw them doing in qualifying, Declan Rice was
00:49now the lone six, Connor Gallagher, as the newspapers reported, he was in this sort of
00:53wide eight role, and Jude Bellingham, he was just in everybody's way.
00:57And we'll really get into the weeds of all this as the video goes on, but I'm going to
01:00show you the average positions across the course of that game, and you can see there's
01:04a bit more of a midfield balance, nobody feels stuck in any particular position, but once
01:09again the number 10 and the number 11 are right on top of each other.
01:14Jude Bellingham was way better set up in this system, but still found himself getting his
01:18wires crossed with Phil Foden.
01:20Which is incredibly annoying and incredibly stupid, because the reason you would switch
01:24to a 4-3-3 like this, and bring Connor Gallagher in, is to do two things.
01:30Reason number one, as we've literally just said, is you take Jude Bellingham out of this
01:33number 10 position and you put him in the eight, you should theoretically keep him out
01:37of Phil Foden's way, and reason number two is by putting Connor Gallagher in this midfield
01:41with all his legs and his running and his enthusiasm, you should theoretically stop
01:45Declan Rice getting repeatedly pulled out of position, which is something we highlighted
01:49frequently in that Denmark game.
01:52So let's look at reason number one, first of all, the Bellingham-Foden situation.
01:55You can see from Phil Foden's heat map, this is actually a much, much, much better game
02:00for him.
02:01Yes, he's receiving wide left, but he's getting involved in that number 10 area way, way more.
02:05He's popping up in his favoured position, which is this right-hand half space, and even,
02:09oh my god, it's Christmas, he's getting on the overlap occasionally, he's finding better
02:13runs and he's making more use of that left space.
02:16But it did absolutely not work for Jude Bellingham, because the hope is when you play him as this
02:21number eight, then he should be able to sort of take the ball in slightly wider positions,
02:25but move up this channel and then go from there into the 10 area when it is free and
02:30Foden is stretching the defence.
02:31But if we look at his heat map, that's not the story at all.
02:35He spent most of the game just stuck in this sort of deep left-hand position, never really
02:40able to get into the box, never really able to drop and help dictate the play.
02:44He really did feel, and this is astonishing given how good he is, like a complete spare
02:48part in this system.
02:50Just take a look at his completed passes from that game, there are so many of them just
02:54concentrated way out here on the left where he's no threat whatsoever.
02:58And even on the rare occasions he does manage to get into a dangerous position, these are
03:03all backwards, there's nothing with any incision.
03:06Like here, fun game, win £100, show me anything Jude Bellingham did forwards in that final
03:12third.
03:13Go on, take a real long hard look, there's some cash to be won, anybody?
03:17Anybody?
03:18Sorry, it was actually a trick question, because these are all his passes into the final third.
03:23They're red because not a single one of them came off.
03:26I think what's particularly frustrating about this Bellingham performance is that I actually
03:29think that left-sided A position is the best use of him.
03:32Like you saw him at the last World Cup, it worked really, really well because you had
03:36Marcus Rashford here, who makes direct runs at the defenders, creating pockets of space
03:41for him to get into here.
03:42And you've got Luke Shaw, a naturally left-footed left-back, who makes overlapping runs, again
03:47creating bits of space for him.
03:48And then from there, he sort of floats into this sort of 10 position, he can get near
03:52the centre forward, he fills the Rashford spot, he fills the Shaw spot.
03:55It all kind of works in synergy, but you don't get any of that with Phil Foden or Kieran
04:01Trippier.
04:02Because Trippier won't get on the overlap because he's got no left foot, and Foden won't
04:05drive into the box at the defenders here, he wants to be right there where Bellingham
04:09is.
04:10Like it's actually kind of depressing to watch.
04:12Like England are under no pressure here whatsoever, there's nobody going out to the player with
04:16the ball.
04:17Why do you feel the need to go short to receive this?
04:20You're not helping in any way, shape or form.
04:23Go somewhere where if they can get a ball between a line, then you can do some damage.
04:27Something, in my opinion, is not quite right with Jude Bellingham, but we will get to that
04:32at the end of the video.
04:34Alright, so big change that Gareth Southgate made, number one, the whole Foden-Bellingham
04:38readjustment.
04:39I would say that's a mixed bag.
04:40Foden had a much better game in a 4-3-3, but Bellingham had a much worse one, so we'll
04:45call that even.
04:47So change number two was moving to this 3-3-3 system and putting Gallagher in instead of
04:51Trent Alexander-Arnold.
04:52And part of that was to address Declan Rice's struggles in the Denmark game, which again,
04:57we did go into severe detail with in that video.
05:00So yes, Declan Rice, wonderful, wonderful player, I thought he should have got PFA Player
05:05of the Year.
05:06You put him in one of these eight roles, he'll make things absolutely sing, but you put him
05:09in as a number six, either with somebody else or as the lone one.
05:14And he looks like a child in a shopping centre who does not know where its parents are.
05:19And the problem he has is that he is very neat, and he is very tidy, and he retains
05:23possession well, and he takes it off the defence really well.
05:27But you need, at any level of football, a pass that will break a line, whether that's
05:31pressure that's being applied high up the pitch, or deep defences, whatever it is, you
05:36need to be able to take players out of the game if you are a number six.
05:43And we'll show you his pass map from this game, it genuinely looks like I have faked
05:47this just to prove a point.
05:50Every single pass in this central area is almost perfectly, perfectly horizontal.
05:56Like that is absolutely staggering to look at, like if these passes were real and you
06:02could prop them upright, you could climb them like a ladder.
06:05And I might be spotting one or two here that look fairly dangerous, like this one in particular,
06:09that's quite long from deep into the box, but that's a pretty speculative hoof to Harry
06:13Kane towards the end of the match, it's not anything particularly clever.
06:17Like just to show you what a lone number six should be doing in a system like this, I'm
06:20going to swap this for Rodri's pass map.
06:24Like this is when they were playing against Italy, so for portions of the game he was
06:26getting pressed really aggressively, for portions of the game they had Italy penned in.
06:30And yes, there is a lot of neat and tidy side to side stuff, but just look at the horizontal
06:36lines in this, look at his ability to play it through either an attacking line or a midfield
06:41line to take players out of the game.
06:43I actually felt pretty bad for him because the one really good pass like that he did
06:47do in the game led to the goal, which never happened, which is quite unlucky as things go.
06:53But anyway, I'm not going to labour the point we've talked about Declan Rice not playing
06:56the ball forward, you'd know about all that right now, so we need some help in the centre
07:00of midfield with another passer, and Conor Gallagher was effectively his partner in this role.
07:05Like they've moved away from the 4-2-3-1, so Gallagher's not playing necessarily as
07:09a pivot, he is definitely more on that side and more advanced than Rice who I've just
07:13knocked over there.
07:14His job was to cover all this ground here, if Saka makes runs you can get round the outside
07:19of him, if Walker pushes all the way up you can cover him behind so they're not exposed,
07:22he can if needs be get into these sort of areas to help Harry Kane, his energy is why
07:27he was there, but Rice needed help with the passing.
07:30So did he do that?
07:31Well, this is all his passes in the first 45 minutes and that is a real brother-er of a graph.
07:40So the solution at half-time seemed fairly obvious, you've got to get Conor Gallagher
07:43off and you've got to put Adam Wharton in there because he's a much better passer of
07:47the ball, but instead we've got Kobi Mane who is at least more in that mould than Conor
07:52Gallagher is.
07:53He comes on and this is his pass map in the second half and you can just see immediately
07:57with the eyes that are in your head that that is way more effective, that is way more on
08:01the ball than Gallagher was being.
08:03You can see he's receiving it in better areas, he's playing it into better areas, he's got
08:07something like this in his locker which Conor Gallagher absolutely does not.
08:11It was allowing England to enjoy better possession than they were enjoying in the first half
08:15but still, still it lacked that cutting edge.
08:19But as I said at the very, very start of the video, England were brilliant in this match
08:23for roughly 90 seconds and that is because of one substitution that came very, very late
08:29in the game, ladies and gentlemen, Anthony Michael Gordon.
08:34He basically did two things in this game and they weren't just things that England hadn't
08:38done in this game up until this point, they're things England hadn't done in this tournament
08:42up until this point.
08:43His first contribution was to basically kick the ball out of play which obviously sounds
08:47bad but it gave the defender a huge, huge scare.
08:50Do you remember the clip before when Jude Bellingham was unnecessarily dropping deep
08:54to receive the ball?
08:55Gordon is doing that here but he's doing it with a purpose and a plan.
08:59He's screaming for it while he's unmarked but he comes even deeper still to pull the
09:03defender out of his line to try and put a bit of pressure on him.
09:06Then as soon as he receives it, he turns straight away, he knocks it past him into the space
09:10he has created and if he just angled that slightly better to keep it in play, he would
09:16have bitten it in behind immediately.
09:18And the thing is, even just from doing that, that is the first time that fullback had really
09:22been tested, really been stretched in the entire game and the next time he receives
09:25the ball, you can see that's playing on his mind.
09:28He wants to get tight to him but he also doesn't want to give him the ability to run in behind
09:32so he gets a little bit of cover from one of his teammates.
09:35This in turn creates space here instead.
09:38And because Gordon is going to drive at these players the way no other England player had
09:42been doing, he goes, okay, well I'll take that space instead.
09:46He cuts into the centre of the pitch, he draws another player towards him and by doing
09:50that Maynard was able to make this run.
09:53And all of a sudden, just like that, England have ripped Slovenia open.
09:56All it's taken is one on the ball run and one off the ball run.
10:01The pass from Gordon is excellent but that is something an England international should
10:04always be able to do.
10:05The little flick is very clever but again, that's meant to be our level.
10:09Harry Kane does the right thing laying it off the palmer and he's just maybe about five
10:14or ten yards away from where we would really need to be to get to that chance quick enough.
10:19But regardless, it was probably the best move England have executed in the whole tournament.
10:25For 90 seconds in this match, the 90 seconds Anthony Gordon was able to contribute, they
10:30all of a sudden looked scary.
10:33And we mentioned Cole Palmer there, he was also excellent when he came on stretching
10:36the defenders, doing things that Bukayo Saka wasn't doing.
10:40Mane who we've already talked about was doing things England's midfield has not been doing
10:44and the three of them have to start the next game.
10:47And that might sound really dramatic and reactionary and knee-jerk but there's actually some method
10:52to this, not just the sort of 90 second little bit of link up they all did here.
10:57We said there's clearly something not quite right with Jude Bellingham but he's not been
11:01England's only massive underperformer.
11:04Harry Kane's also had a really weird tournament, Bukayo Saka has struggled to get involved,
11:08Declan Rice looks completely at sea and there may be a very good reason for that.
11:14All four of these players in particular, you can see here, have played an insane amount
11:20of minutes since the start of last season.
11:23They were involved in pretty much every single competition towards the slightest stages,
11:26they were mainstays for their club sides, almost never ever getting a rest and all four
11:32of them look completely, completely shagged.
11:36And then you compare that to Palmer's minutes, to Gordon's minutes, to Maneu's minutes and
11:39it's not dramatically lower by any stretch of the imagination but the one thing these
11:44players feel like they've had that the others haven't is a bit of a break since the end
11:49of the season.
11:50And I mean at the very least the three of them haven't just played three full games
11:54of this European Championships in stifling heat in Germany and it shows.
12:00So England have still got massive problems going into the knockout stages, I don't think
12:04there's any sort of debate about that but they do have solutions and several of them
12:09available to them if they just go and take them.
12:13And you might think this is like clutching at straws but there are actually some fairly
12:19big positives to take from that group stage performance and with a straight face I'll
12:24try and explain them.
12:25So to be blunt, no team in this tournament right now looks particularly defensively sound.
12:32Portugal have been pretty good but they gave up some massive chances against the Czechs.
12:36Germany were excellent and tight and compact in their first two games and then got a real
12:39test against Switzerland and started to fall apart at the seams a bit.
12:43Spain's entire defensive structure is just based on running really fast at loose balls
12:47because they're getting bullied off them if they can't win that race.
12:50The Belgians are being the Belgians, they are rioting on the streets of France and Italy
12:56should almost certainly be out of this tournament.
12:58But England, for all you may have fallen asleep in the last two games at some point, have
13:03actually been rock solid at the back.
13:07They have, and I know a lot of people don't care about xG, we do need to clarify that
13:10but just go with me on this, they have the lowest xG per 90 minutes in the tournament
13:15so far.
13:16They're giving up 0.36 per match which means all the chances in all three of those games
13:21have equated for each team to be worth a third of a goal.
13:26And while the numbers are way less impressive for the total number of shots and the total
13:29number of shots on target they've given up, teams are getting a lot of chances against
13:33them.
13:34The average distance of all those chances against England is the highest.
13:39The average chance they're giving up is from about 22 yards.
13:43And yes alright that might not inspire you with confidence in a tournament full of shit
13:46pingers and piss missiles but that is still not a reliable way to be scoring goals against
13:51any team.
13:52They're not giving teams good chances.
13:55And given one of the major concerns about this England side going into it was that all
13:58of a sudden they look way more open and were giving too many chances away, if they can
14:02just, just make it click in that final third the way they did in the last couple of seconds,
14:10it is already set at the back.
14:12They might, they might be okay.
14:14I think it's been said by far more intelligent analysists than me that the team that normally
14:20goes far in these tournaments is the one with the best defence and coming out of the group
14:25stages, undeniably, even though it doesn't look like it, England probably have had the
14:31best defence.
14:32Like that against Slovenia was crap but can you remember them having a sniff?
14:38No you can't.
14:39So there you go, somehow I managed to take that and end the whole thing on a positive
14:44even though Jude Bellingham looks like he needs to sleep for two weeks in England still.
14:48Can't score a goal!
14:49Anyway let me know your opinions of all of this in the comments below.
14:52It was a lot of fun reading the ones after the Denmark game so please do give us thoughts,
14:57feelings, opinions, poetry, song, lyric, verse, whatever you've got, we would like to see
15:01it down there.
15:02Elsewhere you can get me on all of the socials at AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y, the 442 socials
15:06are in the corner of the video.
15:08The latest issue of the magazine, can I have an issue of the magazine please, thank you
15:11very much.
15:12Stars of Euro 2024, that's available now from all good retailers and the terrible ones as
15:16well.
15:17And until whoever it is we play in the knockout stages, this has been 442, I've been Adam
15:23Cleary and maybe it's coming home, maybe, bye, thanks for that.