Time to keep the faith with Thomas. The whole nature of the game changes with the knock out stage. No more “parking the bus” and “strike on the break”. It is a negative tactic used by lesser teams against us and this will stop as we have to play the more able sides and of course a draw is no longer an option.
Basically we did what we had to do to get through to this stage and to some extent it is now game on. We must win on Wednesday or we are out of the World Cup. A five pm start time will be welcomed by the English fans and we hope to play Mexico and Brazil who are tough teams to beat. That is not to say that DR Congo will not be tough. The standard of all the 32 remaining teams will be high but obviously some will be a lot harder to beat than others.
The knock out matches will suit England better. These are matches that you have to win and when. you have players including Bellingham, Kane, Rashford and Saka you are hopeful that we will win matches. Pickford is solid in goal and hopefully the defence will sharpen up. Sometimes it is a matter of playing matches together and playing as a team.
So I am very hopeful that we will still take this all the way. We do have the ability , the manager knows what is needed and hopefully he won’t have to make too many speeches to get the results that we all want.
