Sure

But you could also say we only produced a couple of class performances at France 98 under Hoddle. Tunisia was average, Romania an utter cock-up. History tells us that even successful England sides have to scramble mightily hard to get to the semis: England at Italia 90 (my favourite England side ever, under my favourite manager) were exactly the same. Very good against Holland and Italy, excellent against West Germany; but awful against Ireland, tepid against Egypt, very shaky v Cameroon and outplayed for long spells by Belgium.

I was at the Switzerland and Spain games, so acknowledge how bad (and lucky) we were. But that doesn't take away how strong, how positive we looked against Holland and Germany - nor, indeed, that he even almost cracked our penalty troubles too. Twelve taken in the tournament, eleven scored: not bad at all.

Posted By: thebigfeller on November 19th 2007 at 14:45:26

Message Thread

England vs Croatia in 2004 (Other Football) - Steve in Holland, Nov 19, 13:43:04
- plenty of norwich fans at that game at benfica's (Other Football) - Cheltenham_Canary, Nov 19, 18:36:07
- Turned into one of our best 5 performances under Sven (Other Football) - thebigfeller, Nov 19, 13:54:57
- that was a brilliant 2nd half performance by England IIRC (n/m) (Other Football) - Brandonio, Nov 19, 13:50:49
  - won £60 that day (Other Football) - pants, Nov 19, 14:07:54
  - Yup. I seem to remember us being frightening, but statistically it was close (Other Football) - Steve in Holland, Nov 19, 13:52:32
    - We almost never had the majority of possession under Sven, to be fair (Other Football) - thebigfeller, Nov 19, 13:56:09
      - different story under Hoddle (well bar a couple of big games!) (Other Football) - Brandonio, Nov 19, 14:02:18
        
        Agree 110% (n/m) (Other Football) - Brom, Nov 19, 14:43:33
        
        That's impossible, numbnuts (n/m) (Other Football) - Steve in Holland, Nov 19, 14:44:32
        
        Agree, England were going places before he opened his trap (Other Football) - pants, Nov 19, 14:09:18
        
        I agree (Other Football) - thebigfeller, Nov 19, 14:06:19
        
        don't agree England played like that under Venables (Other Football) - Brandonio, Nov 19, 14:30:33
        
        Sure (Other Football) - thebigfeller, Nov 19, 14:45:26
        
        And Holland in 96 werein turmoil off the pitch, never mind on it (n/m) (Other Football) - Steve in Holland, Nov 19, 14:37:33
        
        Against England, the Dutch "displayed a collective will of purest blancmange". (Other Football) - thebigfeller, Nov 19, 14:46:47
- Beckham was really good in 2004 (n/m) (Other Football) - pants, Nov 19, 13:48:28
  - uh-huh (n/m) (Other Football) - Steve in Holland, Nov 19, 13:50:13

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