I have great difficulty with these types of things when mentioned tbh, because I think you've done exactly what our English mentality is all about. There's many points that really show this but i'll just pick a few out.
- Gareth Southgate can't pick his opposition, his job is to beat what is in front of him.
- Its actually extremely rare we come up against top ranked teams. Its virtually impossible because we have a high ranking now and much across history (We're 4th in the world only bettered by Belgium, France and Brazil)
- When we do come against one (Croatia) then most people knock them down immediately saying 'we're supposed to win, these are past it'. They are 14th in the world. They were the highest seeds in our group. Current World Cup finalists. We played them off the park.
- His major objectives outside of this Euros on his performance record is; Qualify for WC, Qualify for Euros, Qualify as high and try and win Nations League.
He has qualified for all tournaments so far with great records. He got England to the Semi Final of the World Cup. Only 2 managers have done that for us, ever. He managed to get us into the finals of the Nations League and also beat Belgium in the last Nations League in Nov 2020, ranked number 1 in the world.
Other managers in the past didn't really play any big teams either, and when they did, they got beat. Robson - West Germany, Venables - Germany, Erikssen - Brazil & Portugal, Hoddle - Argentina.
I want us to win so much on Tuesday but more so for Gareth because he's proven that even when it doesn't look quite right or we all get abit nervous, he doesn't and stays the course, playing people mostly on form, playing different formations to what we're used to, playing effective tactical game plans. He deserves to beat Germany so people can stop going for the negative as their first response. You can see why I'm saying it's not you James, its the whole of English culture. Change ourt mindsets like he has. Its what other countries do but for some reason, we are totally shit at it 🤣
As for Venables he is up there for me but even i have to play devils advocate with my own thoughts and remember his short stint was when we didn't have to do any qualification campaign and we had a home tournament. And then the ol' English mentality would also try to say, he only beat Holland really, the other teams were crap and mostly draws - just like when people have a go at our WC campaign in 2018 to the final (and Robson's journey in 1990 was virtually identical).