Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Best way to avoid upset is all systems go
THERE’S only one barrier to England reaching the World Cup quarter-finals – complacency.
It’s by far the biggest danger to the Lionesses in Valenciennes.
The threat won’t come from the Cameroon players, it won’t be down to tiredness, or a poor deal from VAR. It will come down to the manner in which they approach this.
I hadn’t seen the African team play until Thursday when they faced New Zealand. They have a decent striker – Ajara Nchout – and she scored a cracker late on to send them through to the last 16.
They play off the cuff. Up front they are direct, strong and unpredictable. Nchout clearly has something about her. Those are the plus points.
On the downside, they give the ball away repeatedly. They look horribly disorganised and it is difficult to fathom what they are doing at set-pieces – marking doesn’t appear too high on their list of priorities. They weren’t even standing goalside of players at deadball situations.
There were gaps in open play and it was a surprise they made it past a New Zealand side that had looked compact in our warm-up fixture against them a few weeks ago.
England should prosper. They really should. Cameroon have played six World Cup games and not kept a single clean sheet.
That speaks volumes – so it all comes down to the manner in which England approach this. They should take nothing for granted. I’m sure they will be telling themselves that they won’t. This is, after all, a World
Cup knockout game.
And the key will be to start quickly. Cameroon aren’t as sharp as Japan were and England’s greater quality in possession should make life a lot easier for them than it was in Nice.
If I was Phil Neville, I’d be spending time working on set-pieces and emphasising that the quality of delivery will be key. Given that, I would probably plump for Alex Greenwood over Demi Stokes at left-back, just because Manchester United’s skipper really does possess a lovely left foot.
It’s important to say that even though the opposition isn’t the strongest at this stage of competition there should be no compromise on team selection.
The head coach should be playing his strongest XI. If it pans out the way I think it will, then you can bring off any of your players towards the end.
Neville may look after Jill Scott if England can get to a strong position by the hour-mark, I think she flagged towards the end of the game against Japan.
Apart from that, there can be no real excuses.
There have been three clear days between the last 16 and the quarter-final and that really should be sufficient for the players to recover. Cameroon only had two. So, I’m really not worried about the outcome of this one.
My only real concern is that England feel the same and aren’t right at it. If they are, you can expect to see them in the last eight in Le Havre on Thursday night.