u/CII_Guy

Still processing the loss as it's gutting. I think people are crucially missing relevant information about the game and what happened, in order to lay the blame entirely on Tuchel. I'm not saying he managed the game perfectly, but he is absolutely correct when he says that the state of the game changed before he made any changes. That is not on him and it undergirds the entire story from the goal onwards.

After scoring, we went severely onto the back foot. We completed 5 passes in total from the 67th minute to the 92nd minute. Five passes. For the first 5 minutes of this, obviously it was nothing to do with Tuchel. After that, he brought on Konsa for Gordon. Perhaps a bad decision, but he was reacting to us already having gone completely onto the back foot - it's not unreasonable to shore up the defense in this circumstance and it is absolutely not an excuse for us continuing to have some of the worst ball retention I have ever seen from an international side. If anything, having a back 5 should have meant that we could play a more controlled possession game, but we were getting so dominated in the midfield that nothing was working. Rice had lost his legs completely and Bellingham and Kane went totally missing - I think that's a combination of their being tired, Argentina marking them extremely well, and just general nerves meaning they couldn't do what was needed to win the 50/50 that would give us some space to relieve pressure. I don't think this is anything to do with Tuchel.

Bringing on Nico O'Reilly was the right decision to try to deal with this, as he's tall and very strong on the ball. Bringing on Dan Burn for a shaky Reece James is also not remotely unreasonable after 25 minutes of us playing, genuinely, like we had 9 men. Dan Burn's defensive efforts against Mexico were heroic and saved us, and it's not a remotely ridiculous decision, faced with a total capitulation in our ability to control the midfield. Argentina were stronger than us, had more energy than us, and maintained more focus than us.

People have complained that a low block will never work on Argentina. Perhaps, but what we saw at times was not a low block, but a low line. The Enzo Fernandez goal is absurd. Every single defender bar Anthony Gordon is in a line defending the potential cross. Bellingham is the only one, somehow, to recognise the danger of the shot, but it's too late. It was too late 5 seconds earlier when we had 9 men defending the box against 4. That is, again, not on Tuchel. It seems to me that the players were bricking it and this caused them to play ridiculously cautiously, giving Fernandez one of the easiest opportunities to shoot he's likely to get this side of Saudi Arabia. On that subject, I hate to say it, but there are 20 keepers in the world at minimum who would make light work of that shot. Pickford is a very good goalkeeper for his size, but size is an extremely important element of goalkeeping and I think this is doubly true in international football where shotstopping becomes paramount.

I hope people appreciate my thoughts. I am open to challenge.

Rashford played two decent passes in this game and beyond that did nearly literally everything wrong.

Do me a favour and watch the full passage play out where Bellingham's header forces a wonder save at the end of the first half. Madueke puts in a perfect cross and then the save pushes the ball wide, Congo are very disorganised and Rashford casually strolls towards it, stands on it for a second, and then puts the tamest most pathetic cross you've ever seen directly into the keeper's hands.

He miscontrolled the ball twice in circumstances any professional should find easy, he shot a pretty easy chance directly at the only part of the goal AWB could have covered, he fluffed the one on one chance he had by not even hitting the target. The last thing he does at 57 minutes is put in an embarrassingly bad cross that flies over the goal.

I am surprised more people don't think he was clearly the worst player on the pitch. At least the Guardian's journalist agrees with me.

Sorry Marcus, you're a good lad and can be a great player but that was not it.

I think the stress of not having scored for 3 halves of football slightly clouded everyone's judgement of the first half. We were, in fact, completely dominant and created a lot of opportunities to get goals. We also did this while clearly playing with caution because conceding could have been so problematic. Bellingham, in particular, is untouchable in that first half. He goes a bit quiet after 35 mins but the first 35 he does everything and they have no answer.