Lucky England

[Fulham Tup North]

England ground out a result against a side who turned up to play anti-football.
Fortunately a good result against Panama and we will be through to the 2nd phase and playing teams who are here for football and not WWF.
Also the poorer Ref's get sent home, so that's a double win!!
COYW

[andyk]

England deserved the win, but it was a little worrying.  Faced with a team which set out to frustrate, to push and pull, to foul and break up the play, the team did seem to run out of ideas quite quickly.
More talented teams will pose a bigger challenge, and England still miss something. Not quite sure what it is, maybe a midfield playmaker, a genuine wizard, which most of the top teams have, or a football genius, someone who reads the play, spots the opportunity and makes the crucial pass. They have one of course, but the young lad is on his holidays, when he should be on the pitch.

[bobbo]

What an absolute load of rubbish saying England were lucky.
We thoroughly deserved it.
The referee was Tunisia's best player.
We should have been 3 0 up at half time, their penalty was a joke, we should have had two nailed on penalty's.  Tunisia never had a shot on goal, all they did was foul. Where was VAR.
England kept going never gave up, and the first 90 + minutes are the most important.
My only criticism is that we should have been more clinical, and Ruben Loftes Cheek should have come  on earlier.
England won tonight, and so did football.
Well deserved well done England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

👍👍👍👍 oh so right woolly , yes some players as always were not as good as others but never lucky. In that context swan , you could say any team is lucky when they win. We deserved it.

[Woolly Mammoth]

I think swan you may have been sent down the swanny on this occasion.

[Andy S]

Sorry but in the end we never gave up and luck was on our side in the last minute. But yes we deserved it and should have scored the goals earlier. Well done England for grinding it until the end

[Forever Fulham]

With U.S. and Canada out of it, I'm supporting England.  Hope my recorder worked so I can see it later tonight. 

[St Eve]

We deserved the win but we are going to have to improve a lot and quickly. Many players were poor in particular Sterling, Dele Alli and Young. Never rated Walker either. Hopefully there are changes for the next game. On a positive note I thought both center backs were good.

[bill taylors apprentice]

Not Lucky at all!
But shows the lack of clinical finishing, Kane apart!
Some will improve but the likes of Sterling seem unable to add coolness under pressure to his pace and trickery.

If this team really is a long term plan, then fair enough but when they meet teams who ask more questions we will be offer a better assessment.

[toshes mate]

There were shades of not being clinical at finishing off moves with only Kane showing composure in the final third, not just his finishing, but in expecting the referee to protect him from foul play throughout and showing remarkable restraint.  I'd thought, for one ridiculous moment, that FIFA had introduced VAR to root out bad refereeing decisions but, apparently, it was just a fancy way of employing another five officials to sit idly by.  I hope Kane's composure is infectious because don't most of England's players need a whole huge dose of it?  Sterling and Young were notable offenders. 

The outcome was just on the balance of play but didn't England make hard work of achieving it?  If they can just stretch out that opening twenty minutes of fine play to last ninety then they may have a chance of going further.

[grandad]

A  result against a poor side but so many poor performances. They look as if this was their 1st time playing together. Apart from Kane the rest were well below the standard required to go very far in the competition. We are in the easiest group to qualify but there are so many quality sides ahead of us.
We will never win another World Cup until we field a Fulham player.

[The Swan]

I did not say that England did not deserve to win but that they were lucky to get the winner in added time.

[Lighthouse]

I did not say that England did not deserve to win but that they were lucky to get the winner in added time.

Why lucky? Down to the timing? I would imagine many goals are scored in injury time or late on and we always think it is unlucky if it is against us or good timing if it is our team who scored. 'We never gave up' rubbish. But goals will always be scored late on as we have seen this World Cup.

[davew]

Late goal by Kane gets England the win. I can't see England getting very far

I wouldn't say England were lucky. Could justifiably have had 2 penalties and had by far the better chances.
The Tunisians were very cynical - God knows what the point of VAR is!

+ 1

[Deeping_white]

The only problem they'll have with playing a high press, high intensity game is that the climate is pretty much against them. They showed what they can do in the first 20 minutes but playing in such hot and humid conditions when they're not used to them will kill them off pretty quickly, as we saw with the intensity dropping in the second half. You know it's pretty bad when even South American teams are going down with cramp and fatigue.

Other than that I think England definitely deserved it. It was very much like a Fulham performance in that they tried to dominate the ball, but occasionally got guilty of moving it too slowly and struggled to break down a team that sat very deep for almost the whole game. Probably should've been out of sight by half time but that's football. No idea what the ref was doing because that penalty was very dodgy, and how England didn't get two penalties I'll never know. On a side note, it always makes me laugh when western Europeans are called soft, yet you literally had a Tunisian player rolling around for over a minute because Trippier kicked a ball that hit him in the ribs...

[Jimmy Hill]

Thought England played a great game fully in control not shots on target apart from a bit of soft penalty. Doing a full press for 90 mins isnt an option with the humidity but showed how dangerous they are when they do it. Looked like one of the better teams in the tournament after the 1st round of matches but tougher tests to come

[filham]

Phew,  we were by far the better team but came so close to dropping two points. Changes needed for next match, can we afford to give Sterling another chance, Walker is not a centre back, Loftus Cheek deserves more match time.
Can't really see this young team matching the big boys like Spain and Brazil unless we develop fast over the next couple of matches.

[Holders]

Nice to see England playing in our national colours as well.

[FFCSteve]

Yes we deserved the win! First twenty was encouraging, but overall a poor game in my opinion!
But I guess disappointment because we all wanted to see a good strong performance.

[Grumpy Worthing White]

England ground out a result against a side who turned up to play anti-football.
Fortunately a good result against Panama and we will be through to the 2nd phase and playing teams who are here for football and not WWF.
Also the poorer Ref's get sent home, so that's a double win!!
COYW

Well said Sir, My thoughts entirely and what`s the point of VAR when Harry Kane was body slammed twice a la WWE, Kurt Angle would have been well chuffed by those two moves  092.gif.

[Maccy91]

I think it was mentioned that last nights climate will probably be the worse that we will have to play in, but heres what i took away from it, we beat the best team africa currently has to offer in difficult conditions, the referee & VAR was a waste of space & much like fulham i honestly believe when we start playing teams that actually want to play football our front line could cause havoc, but walker will need to be dropped for cahill against better opposition