England v Honduras

[TheFasterBlade]

Minimu!

 

[Spaghetti Legs]

One Saints fan (apparently) wrote a well thought-out post about Lallana and England tactics in the Guardian comments section, so I'm going to repost it here. This post was in response to someone who was saying Lallana is useless and should be dropped.

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Consortium11> DerkNew
08 June 2014 1:38am
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I'm a big Lallana fan so it pains me to somewhat agree but he is in essence being misused by England.
1) Lallana isn't at his best as a winger. He's at his best as a number 10 who plays in the hole and can switch to the wing occasionally. The last time he regularly played on the wing was in the 2012/13 season... where he was little more than solid. The strong season he's coming off came on the back of him primarily playing more centrally. He's wasted on the wings... his best attributes are minimised and his weaknesses exposed.
2) Lallana's at his best when there's a lot of players playing off him so his flicks, turns and "cute" moments have more chance of getting to a players feet. As things stand the English attack is too static... there's normally one runner at best which means the opposition can not only focus on smothering Lallana himself (as opposed to being dragged around by other runners and thus creating space) and Lallana has less options to get the ball too. The relatively poor first touch of a lot of England players doesn't help.
3) Somewhat added to the above, outside of Sterling and AOC England don't really have many natural wingers going into the tournament. Sure, Lallana, Welbeck, Sturridge and Rooney have all played there but they all tend to come centrally with or without the ball. That leads to a heavily congested centre of the park which means 1) the deeper midfielders have fewer options to pass to and 2) the opposition can quite easily throw a blanket over almost all of them
So are England using Lallana to his best? No.
But should they?
That's more difficult.
Don't get me wrong. I like and rate Lallana. He's been brilliant for us over a number of seasons domestically and he's got an excellent feel-good story. He brings defensive commitment, a high workrate and a level of technical skill and flair English players aren't really associated with. But is he such a special talent, especially considering his age (26 isn't exactly old but it's not young either) that we should look to do all of the above just to get him performing at his best? Is he a player we should look to build a team around... when there are all the other options there?
If we are to use Lallana it should be in the position he plays in rather than fall into the trap of looking to fit a talented in-form player into the side regardless of whether he fits or not. That means playing him at 10. Not on the wing. So in that regard he's not really competing with Sterling or Welbeck... he's competing with Rooney and to a lesser extent Barkley. Personally I'd be tempted to try starting Lallana at 10 with Sturridge/Rooney ahead of him and two out of Welbeck, AOC or Sterling on the flanks... but with the idea being to bring on Barkley to replace him early in the second half when a fresh Barkley being more direct against a tiring defence gives us a powerful new option.

Read this last night on there, really good post.

The England attack being static he mentions is so painfully true, its frustrating to watch that lack of movement and creativity, its nothing new though but with the players available England should be able to have some fluidity/creativity in attack, its down to Hodgson to sort it out though which is another problem, not sure he is capable.

Rooney being there doesn't help imo, he just seems to slow things down and get in the way of other players, all the other attackers look much sharper than him, look how often Sturridge was on the wing last night, far too much, thats just wrong and shouldn't be happening, interesting little video piece on Rooney here from Pat Nevin http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27752713

 

[Judge Jules]

And yet there are some who still actually advocate starting the Studge from a wide position and putting Shrek up front. For example Danny Higginbottom (who seems to be trying to carve out a new career as a radio pundit) was saying this yesterday before the Honduras game.

 

[Markeh]

--------------------------Sturridge
-----------------Sterling ------- Lallana
---------------Barkley ------- Henderson
-------------------------Gerrard
---Baines ------ Cahill ----- Jagielka -- Johnson

Something like that seems right to me, there are 4-6 players there that will not stop running for 90 minutes. Relies a lot on the fullbacks and players being responsible enough to go where they're needed but imo Sterling and Lallana would do well with a bit of freedom.

 

[Spaghetti Legs]

And yet there are some who still actually advocate starting the Studge from a wide position and putting Shrek up front. For example Danny Higginbottom (who seems to be trying to carve out a new career as a radio pundit) was saying this yesterday before the Honduras game.

Yeah, to be blunt its just a load of crap, if you are not going to play your best striker as a striker then don't bother playing him at all, especially when that striker shows hes not half as effective out there, play a specialist wide player out wide, don't shoehorn players into positions where they are not comfortable/effective for the sake of accommodating a player because of his name/reputation, its not exactly rocket science but England have a habit of being guilty of this sort of stuff.

 

[Spaghetti Legs]

--------------------------Sturridge
-----------------Sterling ------- Lallana
---------------Barkley ------- Henderson
-------------------------Gerrard
---Baines ------ Cahill ----- Jagielka -- Johnson

Something like that seems right to me, there are 4-6 players there that will not stop running for 90 minutes. Relies a lot on the fullbacks and players being responsible enough to go where they're needed but imo Sterling and Lallana would do well with a bit of freedom.

Looks a good set up but Hodgson doesn't seem at all interested in 433, don't think hes given it any chance yet? suppose its asking way too much for a dinosaur like him to be flexible, its a surprise he ditched 442.

 

[Red Bird]

And yet there are some who still actually advocate starting the Studge from a wide position and putting Shrek up front. For example Danny Higginbottom (who seems to be trying to carve out a new career as a radio pundit) was saying this yesterday before the Honduras game.

Hear that and he sounded even more stupid each time he tried to explain his reasoning.

You know we (as in England) have a good group but [absolutely] the wrong manager.

 

[Red Bird]

Hendo's doing very well.

He did very well.