Mistakes Roy had already made

England have finished all three of their group’s games now, and 2 draws and 1 win is a disappointing return from a group that England were heavy favourites for.

Looking back at these matches we can see that Roy has already made some big mistakes.

Now I understand that everyone thinks they can do a better job than their respective team’s manager. I’m not saying I could do a better job than Roy, I’m just highlighting some decision that raised a few eyebrows.

In the very first group match, a controversial decision had already been made. The starting line-up didn’t feature Premier league winner Jamie Vardy. The reason given was that Russia played with a deep defensive line, meaning that Vardy wouldn’t be able to use his pace to get in behind the back four. This seemed like a good enough reason, until you see that Raheem Sterling was the player replacing him up front. Sterling, who is not even a striker, has even more pace than Vardy. Sterling is more reliant on his pace as well, at least Vardy has other attributes that could benefit the team. There is no logic in that selection! Not expecting much, I watched Sterling and he offered no attacking threat at all. Around the 70 minute mark, just about every England fan was screaming at their tele telling Roy to bring on Vardy. At this point Russia were chasing the game, so their defensive line was pushed higher up, meaning that Vary would have been able to use his pace, and clever runs to get in behind. The changes weren’t made though, and Russian scored a late equaliser leaving fans to wonder what might have been.

The second mistake that Roy made, was to keep Sterling in the starting line-up against Wales, again at the expense of Vardy. Sterling hadn’t started well against Russia, and even then faded as the match went on. That was not a performance that warranted a starting place in the next match, yet Roy still went with him. After going one nil down, England’s blushes were spared by goals from Daniel Sturridge and guess who? Jamie Vardy. Ahead of the 3rd game changes were needed, and that’s what Roy did.

Although Ray made changes ahead of the third match, he managed to yet again frustrate us. 6 changes were made. 6! In a game where we still needed a point to qualify, we field a weakened team. This not only risked momentum going into the knockout stages, but risked us not getting out the group at all. In a tournament like this momentum is important. In Euro 96 England scraped a 1-1 draw with Switzerland in their first match, luckily beat Scotland in their next match before destroying Holland in their final match. This result filled England with confidence and momentum which they then used to carry them to the semi-finals. Playing a weakened team risks a bad result and the momentum is lost. Those changes proved costly, England only managed a 0-0 draw meaning that they dropped down to second place in the group. This means they face a harder team in the next round.

England do still have a chance to go far in this competition, but Roy will need to start getting his act together if that is going to happen.