There’s a principle popular with football coaches at the moment – perhaps it always has been – called ‘three in the V’. Imagine a long V-shape drawn spanning the width of the goal at its widest point and tapering towards the of the box: that’s your V.
In attack, you ideally want to have three players in there at any one time, because that’s where the bulk of your goals are going to be finished. Some sides have it painted on the pitch at their training ground
If you had drawn that same V on the Finland penalty box for the first hour or so of this encounter in Helsinki, it would rarely have been graced by England players. Not even Harry Kane, that often.
Just spitballing, is this a side-effect of this country’s lack of young centre-forwards? Are kids not getting trained on the basic tenets of getting in position to score goals? Does that explain why England have a side full of players who want to play the final pass, and practically nobody with the instinct for getting in position to finish them?
It’s a bit weird for what was, ultimately, a comprehensive victory to have been made to look such hard work. The result vindicated England in the end, of course, and complaining about any team’s victory against any opposition always feels churlish. They won, 3-1, away from home. Grand. On to the next one. But there are things they need to work out, so it would be daft not to discuss them.
Finland made it difficult to find space in the box, so credit is due there, but it made it frustrating watch to see England constantly working the ball out to the flanks, see Cole Palmer or Jack Grealish hold it up, and for nobody to be available for them to actually play it in to.
The Grealish goal on 18 minutes came from a lovely bit of intricate play: Grealish, out on the left, came back inside to left-back for the day Trent Alexander Arnold. His smart pass for Angel Gomes was followed by a sumptuous outside-of-the-boot through ball for Grealish to run onto and calmly place past Lukas Hradecky.
From there, there was a continual sense of England trying to score the perfect goal, rather than simply scoring. And, look, goals like Grealish’s are a delight, but even the best sides score more than their share of scrappy and brute force goals. England are a team of locksmiths who, even when faced with a flimsy polystyrene door, will stick to the tools of their trade rather than simply pick up an axe.
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Even the best sides will concede more often than not, so failing to make the most of those attacks always leaves you open to getting exposed. England were very lucky to avoid falling foul of that at a time when it might actually have matter.
Either England full-back went missing for two of the biggest chances to fall Finland’s way in a good 30 minute spell for the hosts that straddled the break: Trent on one side for the first, Kyle Walker on the other for the second. Both times, the Finnish were unable to finish.
By the time Arttu Hoskonen headed home a corner at the near post, Alexander-Arnold’s free kick on 74 minutes had put the result beyond reasonable doubt – a great example of the benefits of variety – and Declan Rice had killed the game off with England’s third ten minutes later. Great work from substitute Ollie Watkins took the ball half the length of the pitch, with the Aston Villa man getting to the byline, and squaring for a well-taken finish.
England had looked far better since introducing Watkins alongside Noni Madueke, with Harry Kane and Cole Palmer making way. That will have been helped by Finland’s tiring efforts, but once again asking presenting a question that was asked throughout the Euros and was hammered home against Greece on Thursday night: how do you get this array of attacking stars into a team together?
Perhaps it’s worth considering that the answer is actually: you don’t. The solution for England is not to find a way to get all their master craftsmen into one team, but to pick a side with a greater variety of tools.
