The manager’s conservative style against Denmark shows stodginess is becoming his side’s defining flaw behind a marked lack of progress
Just before half-time in Copenhagen on Tuesday night Conor Coady could be heard shouting “Don’t get bored!” at his England teammates as they shuttled the ball across the face of Denmark’s deep defensive lines, keeping possession, waiting for an opening, trying, it turns out, not to get bored.
It seemed like an excellent piece of advice at the time. Albeit one that might have been better directed down the ring of pitch-side mics and into the ears of the watching TV audience, weighing up its continued engagement with a match that felt, for much of the 90 minutes, like being lulled into a waking doze by a group of slow-moving white shapes, while simultaneously having a sack of gravel syringed into your eyeballs.
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