DE.

Two current starters we need to improve on (imo at least) are Henderson and Young. The pair of them just aren't quite up to standard. I'd rather have seen Rose ahead of Young throughout the tournament in honestly as it felt like Young was only there for his set piece delivery and we came a bit unstuck in the end by relying on that so much. Henderson is industrious but I just don't see him as international class starting player. I hope we'll find somebody to challenge him for that position going forward.

The problem we've got is that we'll never beat a good team with our current tactics. Relying on set pieces will only get you so far, especially when we have a habit of conceding at least one goal a game. We only kept one clean sheet in this tournament and we weren't playing great teams. We need to work out how to be more creative in that final third. We have the players but the system isn't quite right yet. Honestly I think France would have beaten us by two or three goals in the final. You never know but we would have gone in as major underdogs. This tournament was good in that it showed where our strengths and our weaknesses lie. It's up to Southgate to work out how to improve us before the next tournament.

Pretty much. The four of them play very high up, which does imbalance the midfield. That might be okay if we could counter attack effectively, but we always have such a gap between defence and attack that it's difficult to make that link and get up the pitch quickly. The other issue is that when we come forward normally the front four are quite rigid and static. Lingard/Alli/Sterling all stick to their defenders with their backs to goal, making through balls very difficult. When they do move it unsettles defences, but too often there's a lack of movement which renders our attacks sterile.

A massive issue that we can't score from open play. The Kane/Alli/Lingard/Sterling front four doesn't really work. I'd be looking to tweak that quite significantly. Defensively we're not quite there either. A lot to work on before Euro 2020. Still, we've got a base to build from. We're far from the finished article and benefited from the luck of the draw. In most world cup years we wouldn't have been anywhere near a semi final. Getting there was more than we'd get most years, so that's something. And we won a penalty shootout. We need to see evolution for Euro 2020. There's something here but we aren't quite there at the moment.

Genuinely think we can beat Croatia. The only question is whether we play a little more defensive to counter Croatia's midfield. The gaps and defensive lapses from the past few games will not go unpunished if we keep doing them. Russia have done incredibly well. Very strange that a team who were ranked so low and been so diabolical before the tournament suddenly became very good, but it seems to happen to every host nation. South Korea got to the semi finals in 2002 after all. Maybe the home advantage at a world cup really is that powerful.

What I'm saying is you can only judge teams in the tournament on how they've performed, and I can't see any reason to bring up us having an "easy" ride when supposedly better teams have fallen short against opponents we have been able to overcome.

It'a amazing (and an indictment on the quality of the Championship) that they stayed up last season in all honesty. Bolton's chairman is blaming the players (whilst admitting he's ignoring the amounts they're entitled to in their contracts) and saying they'll be punished. Can't see that ending well.

What have the so called "elite" teams done in this tournament though? Italy and Holland couldn't even qualify. Germany lost to South Korea and Mexico, and were only able to scrape past a Sweden team we just dominated with a 95th minute winner. Argentina were horrendous throughout the tournament, getting battered by Croatia, drawing with Iceland and then getting brushed aside by France (the 4-3 scoreline massively flattered them). Brazil drew with Switzerland in their group (who Sweden beat to face us) and were then dispatched by Belgium who have great players but aren't elite level. Spain and Portugal both struggled in a group with Iran and Morocco. Spain were then dumped out by Russia whilst Portugal were beaten by Uruguay, who are good but hardly elite level either. Meanwhile we were in a group with one of the tournament's best teams in Belgium, and the highest ranked African team in Tunisia. We beat a Colombian team who smashed Poland and beat a decent Senegal team. We have now comfortably gotten past a Swedish team who got out of a group including Germany and Mexico, and beat a good team in Switzerland to get to the quarter finals. Our semi will either be against the host nation (never an easy game) or a Croatian side who have looked very dangerous up until now. It's simple to call our route "easy" but bigger teams at this tournament have come up short against supposedly "easy" teams and the teams we have faced thus far and will face in the semis have had generally excellent tournaments. If we get to the final it'll be fully deserved and worthy of praise.

I'd take Russia. Host nation or not we should beat them. I'd be worried about what Croatia's midfield could do to our defence.

In 2002 Germany qualified out of a group including Ireland, Cameroon and Saudi Arabia. Their route to the final was Paraguay, the USA and South Korea. Who remembers all of this? Nobody. All people remember is that Germany played in the final against Brazil.

It's over. Can't see Sweden getting two.

Sweden are just an incredibly pedestrian team. No pace and no creativity. They've done very, very well to get this far but if we get another goal it's over.

Hopefully we don't live to regret Sterling being Sterling. No point him getting into these positions when he doesn't have the confidence to finish it off.

Indeed. Some of these players have egos, granted, but all sportspeoole do. You don't become a champion without a bit of an ego. It's not the same as it was with some of the cretins who wore the England shirt 10-12 years ago. Having an English manager helps too. I've always thought it was wrong and embarrassing for a country of our footballing pedigree and development to be using foreign managers for the national team. Just another factor that made it hard to connect with England teams recently. Admittedly I was equally opposed to Roy but that's mainly because I felt he was the wrong man for the job in every possible way, and so it turned out to be.

There was a period in the mid-00's when I went off the national team. I found it difficult to support the likes of Terry, Ashley Cole, Rooney, etc. Supporting England is much easier now that those types of characters are gone.

A lot of the proper Man Utd supporters genuinely despise the England national team. They never got over the whole "stand up if you hate Man U" chants and the Beckham vilification from the late 90's.

The problem is that Sterling isn't particularly skilful or composed - not in an England shirt, anyway. With Sweden likely to play two banks of four for much of the match he's going to need more than raw speed to get a decent chance. There's going to need to be link up play with Lingard/Ali/Kane, which so far we've seen very little of.

The main difference between Sterling and our other misfiring attacking midfielders is that Sterling loses possession far more often. You could argue that's because he's at least trying to beat a man, take a shot or put through a good ball, but a lot of the time against Colombia it was simply poor play. I'd like him to cut that out and try to be more patient. I think his lack of goals or impact in general for the national side is getting into his head a bit and causing him to make bad decisions. Southgate needs to remind him that the less he thinks about making an impact the more likely he actually will. Personally I'm not sure Sweden is the type of game a player like Sterling is going to thrive in. Their rigid, defensive formation will be very difficult to get behind, and Sterling doesn't have the strength or technical ability to get through from the front. At Manchester City he's surrounded by very skilled players who are constantly pulling defenders out of position. Not so much with England. I'm hoping and praying he proves me wrong but I'm not convinced Saturday's game will be one he plays a starring role in.

I respect anybody who can use the multi-quote system effectively tbh. Whenever I try to do it the posts seem to inexplicably roll up into each other and become pretty much unreadable.

I'm amazed Sweden netted three against Mexico. Not sure what happened there. They've only managed to score one goal in all of their other matches so scoring a couple should in theory see us through.

I think we're somewhere between the mega hype and the more negative viewpoints. We're a team who has a lot of potential, works hard and clearly has a strong team spirit. We've got an intelligent, young manager who seems to understand how to manage at international level, and in Harry Kane a genuine leader who scores goals (yes, penalties count) and scares opposition defenders. On the other hand we do have issues with our style of play being a work-in-progress, our defensive play is often lacking and as a result we can't seem to help but concede at least one goal per match. We also have the problem of our creative trio (Ali/Lingard/Sterling) not really producing against anybody except Panama so far. Getting to the semi finals with this team would be a very, very good achievement imo. Granted we've had the luck of the draw but a lot of big teams have crumbled against technically weaker opposition in this tournament. So far, we haven't.

Ali doesn't appear to have been fully fit since he got injured against Tunisia and was then needlessly kept on the pitch for practically the entire match. Our creativity issue is more to do with shape than personnel. It's hard to be creative when you're leaving the middle of the park empty, negating the ability to slot in through balls. Instead we're constantly trying to cross the ball into the area because everybody is high up the pitch. It's little wonder almost all of our goals have been from set pieces. We've been lucky so far in that we have played teams with limited ability - with the exception of Belgium, and that match was basically an exhibition. If Sterling loses the ball against Croatia (assuming they beat Russia and we beat Sweden) and we've left a huge gap in midfield we will get punished. If Rodriguez was playing last night we would have been punished. I can see our match against Sweden being a pretty torrid affair in all honestly. One team who are still struggling to adapt their system and another whose entire style is essentially built on being rigid and defensive. Another 1-0 win from a set-piece could be on the cards. Or a loss in reverse.

I think it might be more the attempt to link the three behind Kane that's the problem. It's a lot to ask for any of the four of them to become a cohesive unit in a fairly fluid, passing system within the space of a few weeks. It might explain why we've only seen glimpses of potential compared to the consistency those players show for their clubs. I still think Rashford (or even Vardy) keep the ball better than Sterling. One of the worst things you can do is needlessly give away possession whilst on the attack and Sterling has been doing it repeatedly. He either needs to make better decisions or be dropped.

Southgate has tried to be loyal to Sterling but it just isn't working. He's not clicking with his team mates and the amount of times he loses possession is a serious problem. We've got Rashford, Loftus-Cheek or Dier who could come in and replace Sterling, depending on how we want to play, so he's far from irreplaceable. Time to admit it isn't working and try something else. Sweden are a very compact team so I don't see Sterling being able to do much against them.

Agreed. Part of me feels like we need another natural midfielder in the centre to drop back and distribute passes alongside Henderson, but obviously that would come at the expense of our attacking options and would mean dropping one of Ali, Lingard or Sterling. I'm not sure that would necessarily be in our best interests as we're already struggling to score from open play (Panama aside). On the other hand Sterling's inability to keep possession and lack of end product is arguably more of a detriment. Fortunately in Maguire we have a player who is willing and able to carry the ball out of defence himself if need be, but our issues come when the opponent starts to box us into a corner, which either leads to us losing possession or knocking it back to Pickford for the big punt up the pitch. Hopefully Southgate is looking at this as it's one of our biggest weaknesses and had we come up against top opposition at any point in this tournament (Belgium's second string not being counted) I feel we would have been harshly punished for it by now.