So ... Who could England have beaten???

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QuintonNimoy
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by QuintonNimoy »

bobcar wrote:Thank you, that just confirmed I'm right and you know it.
OK, if it satisfies you to indulge in infantile sophistry then you do that. I'll be sticking to real life and real results.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Crouchend_Hammer »

I think we could have avoided defeat to pretty much anyone with a bit of luck. Who we could have beaten is a different thing because we hardly ever beat a big or even a 2nd tier sized footballing nation in a competitive game (going back probably to Croatia in qualifiers in 2008)

what we normally do is beat all the crap teams in qualifying, draw with the secondary team (maybe even 3rd teams) in our group and qualify. Then, as we are usually 1st or 2nd seed at the finals we can get through the group stages by beating the worst team and a couple of draws. Then we stay in the competition until we meet one of the top sides and either lose or draw and go out on penalties

Nothing really changed this time except we had a harder group with 2 rather than 1 other 'top' nation and instead of scraping a couple of draws we narrowly (unluckily) lost both. I have no doubt at all that if we had played Costa Rica first we would have won, and no doubt that if we had needed to beat them last game to progress we would have done

The performances relative to the opposition was not really any different this time to other tournaments in my mind, except that the group and order of fixtures was not in our favour and the historical reliance of not losing games (even if we were crap) came to an end
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by QuintonNimoy »

Crouchend_Hammer wrote:...(unluckily) ...
I still don't get it. Are people confusing complexity or chaos for bad luck? I always thought bad luck was something you can't control, like the ref being a total cretin, etc.

Danny Wellbeck being as much use as a cat flap in an elephant house isn't bad luck, it's innate shitness.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Crouchend_Hammer »

i agree with you QM to a certain extent. We probably weren't good enough to beat either Italy or Uruguay, but with a bit more luck we were certainly good enough not to lose to them.

If we played that Uruguay game 10 times, i would say the likilihood is we would win twice, draw 5 times and lose 3 times. In my opinion an 80% chance we wouldn't lose. Similar to Italy

i still stand by the fact that if we had played Costa Rica first, or even 2nd, things would have been very different
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by QuintonNimoy »

Crouchend_Hammer wrote:i still stand by the fact that if we had played Costa Rica first, or even 2nd, things would have been very different
Gone home with 0 points? :D
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Morocco Mole »

I'm with you Quint primarily because this is not a new phenomena. Bar '66 and '90, QF is our zenith. We haven't even qualified three or four times. Were they all bad luck too?

We drew a tough group, got beat twice and went home. This is not a great England team and as nice a fella as he is Hodgson is not a particularly great manager. Luck had nothing to do with it.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Philosophical Dan »

Wrong manager, wrong tactics, inferior squad.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Crouchend_Hammer »

I'm with you Quint primarily because this is not a new phenomena. Bar '66 and '90, QF is our zenith. We haven't even qualified three or four times. Were they all bad luck too?

We drew a tough group, got beat twice and went home. This is not a great England team and as nice a fella as he is Hodgson is not a particularly great manager. Luck had nothing to do with it.
i never said luck was the main reason. What i said was, i do not think we were any worse relative to the competition than in any other recent tournament (not saying much admittedly) We just had a harder group than normal and instead of grinding out a couple of draws (or even one draw - which may have been enough at that point) we got narrowly beaten, meaning the game that i think we would have won become irrelevant. If we had started with Costa Rica first, i honestly think we would have beaten them and qualified in 2nd place and one thing that England are reasonably good at is not losing knock-out games (excluding penalties of course)

In a group where you only play three games, the make-up of the group and the order of fixtures can make a huge difference if you are not considerably better or worse than the other teams
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Hambrosia Stu »

Crouchend_Hammer wrote:In a group where you only play three games, the make-up of the group and the order of fixtures can make a huge difference if you are not considerably better or worse than the other teams
It's a very valid point, perfectly shown by Costa Rica's progress.

Their first game was against Uruguay. Their nemesis, who they'd never beaten. Uruguay slightly under-estimated them, partly for that reason, and the Uruguayans (and Suarez in particular it seems) put greater emphasis on their second game, against England. Costa Rica played like a team with nothing to lose, and Uruguay weren't expecting such a challenge from the minnows of the group.

Had Uruguay beaten Costa Rica, I doubt very much whether Costa Rica would have beaten Italy in their 2nd game. As it was, Costa Rican tails were up, they were flying, full of confidence, and they took that into the Italy game
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by bobcar »

QuintonNimoy wrote: OK, if it satisfies you to indulge in infantile sophistry then you do that.
As I said when you result to insults you've lost the argument.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by PF. »

derek zoolander wrote: I've been saying all tournament that the gaps between nations are closing. The game is truly professional worldwide & it shows.
In a nutshell. It's not just England, and the Italy and Uruguay games could have gone either way,

Still, nothing to beat the normal pessimism of the standard english supporter. :asleep:
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by QuintonNimoy »

bobcar wrote:As I said when you result to insults you've lost the argument.
All your points were engaged with and addressed by me, you're the one dodging the debate. It's up to you what you want to do but you seem to think it's more about finding excuses for petty points scoring and "being clever". Makes no odds to me, whatever makes you happy. Have the moral high ground by all means, you're welcome to it.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Clucking Bell »

I think this is the first time I've agreed with Crouchy about anything. :lol:

Ours was frankly a bang average group and almost any result could have happened. We played pretty well against Italy and we're unlikely to lose although, equally, we probably didn't really deserve to win. On the other hand, we were **** against Uruguay. If Rooney didn't turn up against Italy, he was the only one to put in an appearance against Uruguay. The fact that they only beat us by the one goal, is probably more indicative of the fact that they're **** despite us proving to be more **** on the day. The Costa Rica game was totally meaningless.

All of that said, even if we had got a draw against Italy and beaten the other two, well, we might have beaten Greece and we're capable of getting a result against Holland although it's another one of those play them ten times, get five draws, win twice and lose three times things. But, to actually get our hands on the Cup, we've actually got to beat three tier one countries in the space of ten days and I honestly can't see us doing that unless FIFA choose to hold the competition in England again.
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by last.caress »

Clucking Bell wrote:But, to actually get our hands on the Cup, we've actually got to beat three tier one countries in the space of ten days and I honestly can't see us doing that unless FIFA choose to hold the competition in England again.
I can't honestly see home advantage making that difference, Cluckers. Not at the moment, not for awhile. :(
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Re: So ... Who could England have beaten???

Post by Denzil »

There are nine teams who achieved one point or less. They are:

Cameroon, Oz, Japan, Russia, S. Korea, Ghana, Iran, Honduras and.........England.

That's the company we are keeping at the moment. Something needs looking at. With the money being poured into the English game we really should be producing a far better quality of player.
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