What the VAR was that?

Ok ok, a little bit harsh, but after my earlier post around how the VAR could be England’s 12th man, it certainly wasn’t the best example of its use tonight.

England were never going to lose this match but ultimately after creating several chances and only taking one in the first 15 minutes, it looked as though a refereeing decision was again going to deny England 3 points.

After a bright start, again England failed to put away their chances and were nearly made to pay for them as Tunisia were awarded a penalty to equalize towards the end of the first half.

A drab second half pursued, with too many players fading out of the game. Ali and Lingard disappeared and the biggest cheer of the night (at least where I was watching the game) occurred when the lackluster Sterling made way for Rashford.

The introduction of Rashford and subsequently the lively Loftus-Cheek who I have great hopes for, really lifted the team for a final charge in the last 15 minutes. You cannot say an abundance of opportunities followed, but they got at the Tunisian defence, something that the starting eleven had struggled to do throughout the second half of the match.

The main target in any group phase of a competition is to get off to a winning start. England have done that……JUST and should get past a pretty ordinary Panama side that were washed away by Belgium earlier today, in their next match.

SPORTSvox England Player Ratings

There were plenty of positives to take from the game, the defence was rarely tested however and as much as I like Maguire going forward with his distribution, I have my concerns going the other way.

A couple of times Tunisia exposed his pace playing the ball in the channel behind the very average Ashley Young today. Against better opposition I would see this as an area that we will need to secure otherwise I can see us getting exploited by more clinical teams.

At the end of the day England secured the 3 points that were available. Onward and upwards as they say, look out for our next England Watch ahead of the Panama match on Sunday.