The League has never been a big game, but relegation from the League is humiliating.
England is facing this danger.
In the fourth round of the UEFA Nations League in the early hours of yesterday morning, England lost 0-4 at home to Hungary, a surprising upset, and this result also means that in this UEFA Nations League group stage, England have drawn 2 and lost 2, and need to pin their relegation hopes on the September match against Italy and Germany.
If the less intense UEFA Nations League is playing like this, how can the November World Cup be expected of them?
In this match against Hungary, Southgate put on a 433 formation.
Kane is flanked by Saka and Bowen, three midfielders are Bellingham, Calvin Phillips and Gallagher, and the four defenders are Rees James, Guy, Stones and Walker from left to right.
In actual matches, nominal right-backs are largely absent from attack, with the right-hand pull task given to Bowen or Gallagher, suggesting that in the tireless attempts at four, Southgate still knows Walker's true value.
After all, Stones was embarrassed.
However, even with some three-back elements, England have obvious problems in the formation arrangement.
First of all, in terms of positioning, the right-footed Reese James substitute is not suitable for left-back. At this stage, his advantages are reflected in the confrontation, physical fitness and cross level, Walker is not on, Rees James needs to be plugged in, but his insertion will be very awkward, concentrated in the advantages of plugging in can not be shown:
For that matter alone, it would be better to let Rees James drag it out and Walker get involved in the attack.
Southgate's brain is clearly not flexible enough.
This is also reflected in the use of Saka. In Arsenal's system, Saka's side is taken care of by resources, which is the key to his performance and data. Rees James is not on, and Saka can play a wingback with a larger plug-in, which can provide him with room to play.
However, under a series of arrangements, the left rib attack that seems to be the main attack is very chaotic and disorderly:
The reason for this arrangement, Southgate may be imitating Tenhach.
With a pivot-capable centre forward (Alai/Kane), a large midfielder (Hrafenbeh/Bellingham) is placed on the left rib and a small winger (Anthony/Bowen) is placed on the right, trying to balance the width of the horizontal ripped at the same time, forming a vertical situation of two-man confrontation.
This is indeed part of Tenhach's thinking, but Southgate's imitation has become a tiger not an anti-dog.
In Tenhach's Ajax system, the range of movement of the center forward will not be very large.
Alai does not need to retreat and pull the edge frequently, he only needs to resist the opponent's center-back, and on his left side, HeraFenbech will form a fulcrum in the left rib position to assist the left side to play the attack.
In this way, when the left side of the attack is formed, the strong point of Alai can come to the front of the door, and after the latter point participates, the ladder arrangement of the envelope can be formed in front of the door:
In this goal of Hrafenbech in the Dutch Cup final, Klassen can be seen as a centre-forward:
And the paradox after England's blind imitation appears, Kane must move, not only because he now needs to retreat and pull the edge to form a role, England also needs him to move to open the offensive situation:
Another point is that Bellingham can't do the left rib fulcrum, and he doesn't have this awareness when he often asks for the ball:
In this way, the entire offensive posture changes, like the position in this attack:
In Ajax's system, Kane should not move to the left front, but to the front, and the left side should be left to Bellingham to support, so Bellingham is too far back, and Saka should not be adducted, but should stand in the sideline position, completely ripping the width.
If this is not done, then even if England plays a rib attack, the enveloping force is not sufficient and rich:
After all, you have to face Hungary with five defenders in defense.
Due to the different characteristics of the center, even if you want to imitate the tactical arrangement of others, you must also make a certain transformation and adaptation to this.
Kane can't be in the middle like Alle does, which not only limits his play but also cuts his value to england midfield when he has the ball, but England have not done that.
For example, in the 15th minute this attempt:
By the time Kane has pulled back to pick up the ball and attracted multiple defenders, he has pulled out enough space for the offensive end:
Bellingham could not be a rib fulcrum, so please use the impact to use this space, but he just circled with Kane in the same place, completely without the consciousness of the forward insertion:
Kane is no longer the Kane of 5 or 6 years ago, and this is very clear in Tottenham's configuration.
This season's Kane is still key, but the reason why he can still play the data, the head coach's arrangement can not be ignored. After Conte came to the team, Lucas Jr. quickly lost his position, and Kulusevsky became the main player of the iron, and the reason is not difficult to find.
Compared to Lucas Jr., Kulusevsky can provide confrontation on one side, while at the same time, Son Xingyu is still providing the element of speed and impact, so as a center, Tottenham's system distracts Kane from many of his responsibilities, which allows him to still be suppressed after the retreat, and the opponent's front line will still be suppressed and dare not come forward, because Kulusevsky and Son Xingyu.
But in this game, England did not play a team-level tactic, nor played an effect of supporting Kane.
In the 20th minute, when Bowen Neche took out the space on the left, the person who crossed in kane's side was Saka, and the person who remained in the midfield was Bellingham:
Saka's diagonal insertion only distracted the Hungarian defender for a short time, because the latter knew that Saka was not a threat after the oblique insertion, and Bauer's pass could have been passed directly to Rees James, who was inserting in front of him, and there was no need to pass another kick through Bellingham.
A similar overlap of duties reappears after 4 minutes:
Kane resisted the defender and hit back the space he had brought out, however, there, Saka and Bellingham ran into a space with no one on the outside.
In the 31st minute, when Kane moved sideways this time, Bellingham's first reaction was to first step down and then insert:
Instead, in the 36th minute, on this attack, Bellingham came to where he should be:
This first half alone, just this left half, is a significant manifestation of the lack of tactical responsibilities.
The tactical system of the national team is destined not to be as smooth as the clubs that have been training and playing together all year round, so in addition to the core players, everyone needs to dedicate their tactical role first.
Bellingham, for example, either fights in the ribs or rushes forward, and at this stage is not qualified to play the ball under his feet and dispatch others, and so do others.
Coming back in the second half, England returned to a pure three-back system, Saka retreated to left-wing back, Reese James became a right-winger, and his cross finally came into play:
Bellingham's performance also improved slightly, such as knowing that he needed to take a hit:
Sterling, who replaced Bowen, also had a clearer mind than the former:
England have fared much better during this time, but the main reason for not being able to rewrite the score is attacking efficiency. Kane's retreating, forward-thrusting offensive patterns improved for themselves, but were far from enough threats to play on Hungary's five-man defence.
In addition, hungarian center Sholoy can also use his ability to interrupt their siege posture again and again:
In fact, in the first half, Sauroy showed a strong fulcrum role.
In front of Stones, Sholoy had a very high winning percentage:
This made Stones have to make extra moves to gain an advantage when competing for the top this time, and the result was yellow, laying the groundwork for himself to eat red in the second half:
That's not much to say, Stones' old problem.
In addition, Sauloy can also pull the edge, and his skills at the foot of the wing are also quite good:
His fulcrum and lead role are the key to Hungary's long-term inferiority, but the system never collapses:
It's hard to imagine a big center over 190cm tall, and at the same time, look at Gallagher:
It's also hard to imagine that this is a small midfielder less than 180cm tall.
As a weak-side midfielder, he needs to take on heavier defensive responsibilities than Bellingham, but let alone help Phillips, he himself is difficult to protect.
Strictly speaking, Hungary's first two goals were more accidental.
For example, the first goal came from a set-piece offense:
The set-piece originated from Calvin Phillips' foul, and the starting point of the ball transfer was when Bellingham watched the ball in place:
The second goal was that Phillips stopped the ball too much and was directly dropped by the opponent:
Under the non-special system, whether he can assume the responsibility of a single back must be marked with a big question mark.
England have a lot of players who are not worthy of the name, but the paper strength is still stronger than Hungary, so playing like this, the problems on the offensive end must be held accountable first.
In particular, in the first half, the left half of the design was completely failed, and the attack appeared very chaotic and inefficient, so that the consequences were even more serious when it was added to Sauloy's overall advantage over the England backcourt.
Tenhach's stuff is very good-looking, but every link needs to be matched, and it is forced at the national team level, and the embarrassment will only be Southgate himself.
However, if he wants to use Bellingham to share Kane's burden of confrontation, Southgate can at least be aware of the problem that England's ceiling is gradually lowering, but Bellingham is not yet a second-tier fulcrum and cannot do this job. What's more, he also does not have a strong one-sided back, and a short center-back combination with enough coverage.
0-4, blame yourself.