I’d set out to try and stick to the positives when writing about these Euros. In my experience, when watching your country play at a major tournament – in any sport – the negatives are never far away and it can be hard to stay positive. I mean, I left work early last night in order to rush home and get a few things done before settling down to watch what I’d hoped would be a decent England performance. Look how that ended.
Anyway, here are my 5 positives from England’s latest effort…
Kieran Trippier won his 50th cap. I think Tripps has been the focus of far too much negative attention so far in these Euros. The notion that Phil Foden’s poor form is down to Trippier filling in as a right footed left back seems ridiculous, but it just keeps getting mentioned. Perhaps a look at Phil Foden or the manager’s tactics might reveal the truth on that particular matter? Anyway, Tripps earned his 50th cap and for me, has looked pretty solid while defending at this tournament so far…and I’m aware that I’ve probably just cursed him in saying that!
Jordan Pickford. The second positive and I’m already stretching things a bit. Hear me out though. Pickford is receiving a lot of back passes so far and although people say he’s good with his feet, I’d look more at the fact that he’s liable to drop a bollock at any moment without warning. So there’s my positive. Despite seeing a lot of the ball to his feet, so far there have been no attempted hospital balls to Declan Rice or Cruyff turns in his own six yard box. Fingers crossed it stays that way!
We’re almost out of the group! It looks to be a 99.9% certainty that we get out of the group from this point. Despite the disappointment of the performance and the result, we’re still top of the group. Knock out football awaits as long as we don’t do anything silly. What awaits when we enter knockout football might not be too positive, but we’ll come to that another time!
Anthony Gordon. He hasn’t played a single minute yet, despite half of the country crying out for it. However, I was partly pleased that he never got onto that terrible pitch on Thursday night because that pitch combined with being a Newcastle player added up to a surefire knee ligament injury as far as I could see! Gordon with both knees still intact? I’ll take that as a positive.
Harry Kane scored. So, he seems to be playing at half his capacity, might be injured, is dropping far too deep and his wayward pass from a position that he didn’t need to be in cost us a goal, but he scored. As any England fan knows, Kane scoring once often leads to Kane scoring more. Let’s hope he finds his groove soon!
So, there you have it. Five positives…sort of. What do you expect when we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel? Hopefully the next game makes this a bit easier to write!
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