Victor MeldrewSanguine Yeah, I think it's pretty negative to state that anything but winning a World Cup or European Championships would be a failure, certainly when talking about this current team and the next two tournaments. A lot of this squad will peak through 2024-2026.
I hope you are right but we have heard all this before-nobody said failure per se it is that to be regarded as the best of their era is to win a world cup or, best in Europe, the Euros.
Also there is always the assumption that every other country in the world will stand still.
In the light of that last line I saw :-
England U21 1 Germany U21 2 at Bournemouth last night.
The game was good to watch in front of a full house and was the right result.
Germany dominated the game from start to finish and were pacier and much more accurate with their passing and a truer reflection of their dominance might have been a win by 3 or 4 goals- I haven't seen the stats but the shots ratio must have been something like 12:2.
The crowd was fairly quiet waiting often for England to do something, which they did to some extent just after half-time.
I watched Foden with particular interest, bearing in mind my earlier post on here , and wasn't disappointed.
He was the one shining light in the England side and , as suggested earlier, is the new Wilshere but with a bit more accuracy in his passing, quicker and less inclined to take on one player too many.
He is though very slight and for the moment that might be against him when playing against seasoned pros.
Nobody else stood out , Sessegnon looks as though he has regressed and Demarai Gray wasn't as quick as I thought he was, Tom Davies from Everton was busy but fairly ineffective as was Harvey Barnes from Leicester.
Solanke worked hard up front with little support.
Look out for Hendrichs(sp?) who played right-back in the first half and, following a load of substitutions, left-back in the second and was a man amongst boys.
Germany drew 2-2 with France a few days ago and France are in our group at the Euros I believe so that tournament looks to be competitive and will do the players the world of good.
There were of course no Hudson-Odoi, Rice or Sancho but again I understand some of Germany's senior squad from their game v Holland on Monday will qualify for this tournament as presumably will Mbappe!!
So I will not be getting "carried away" by the senior team and what it MIGHT do as other countries clearly have their own good players coming through as well as us and only time will tell if ours turn out to be better than theirs.