Media agenda brutally exposed on Thomas Tuchel and Dan Burn with England | OneFootball

As sure as night follows day, we knew what the media were all about when it came to Dan Burn and Thomas Tuchel, ahead of that first England match for the pair.

Never has it been so predictable.

An English football media lacking any integrity whatsoever, as usual, with both Thomas Tuchel and Dan Burn directly in their sights.

Even before Thomas Tuchel was announced as the new England boss, the vast majority of the media made it clear how they would approach this.

What a disgrace it was appointing Champions League winning Thomas Tuchel, he’s not English you know…

Conveniently ignoring the fact that Eddie Howe was the only credible Englishman AND no chance he was ever prepared to leave the brilliant job he is doing at Newcastle United for the national set-up.

Honestly, if you polled the football journalists of this country, they would rather have had a Steve Bruce or Sam Allardyce, ahead of Thomas Tuchel.

In an ideal world it would be an Englishman managing England but this is not an ideal world and there were no credible English choices, apart from of course the brilliant Eddie Howe and no way he was taking a step down from the Newcastle United job.

So last night against Albania, the English media lashing into Thomas Tuchel.

His team selection, his tactics, the (lack of) entertainment and so on.

The reality of course is that this 2-0 victory over Albania just felt like every single qualifier we ever watched under Gareth Southgate over so many years.

This was Thomas Tuchel’s first England match, a clean sheet and routine win. Give him a chance!

Oh no, the media desperate to want to portray this as proof of England having made a terrible mistake, Thomas Tuchel clearly not the right man for the job.

Nothing like wanting to make so much out of so little, nothing like wanting to make a snap judgement without giving someone a chance first.

Which brings me to Dan Burn.

I have no doubt that many of these journalists already had their articles written, waiting for any justification to put their nonsense out.

The ‘proof’ that Dan Burn clearly isn’t ‘international class’, according to them.

I thought that overall, Dan Burn did decent.

He was part of the endless passing of the ball that got England nowhere most of the time, he was a threat at set-pieces and hit the bar with one header, whilst at the back he played ok but a couple of times an Albania attacking player got the better of him.

You can of course guess what all the journalists wanted to only concentrate on. A couple of bad defensive moments, yes, like we have never ever seen this before from the likes of Stones, Maguire, Pickford, Walker and so on.

How is that ‘proof’ that Dan Burn isn’t up to international standard/class?

What exactly is international standard/class anyway?

The Premier League is the best, toughest and most competitive in the world, if you play week in week out in the Premier League and do well, then why is suddenly magically more difficult playing against inferior teams, the international ones?

Is playing Albania tougher than facing Arsenal, Forest and Liverpool?

It is like when Newcastle United qualified for the Champions League and people making out like that is some magical massive step up when playing against your average continental opposition. As it happened, Newcastle weren’t given typical last season, they were give the toughest group imaginable, in AC Milan, PSG and Borussia Dortmund.

Dan Burn was only able to start three of the six Champions League matches due to injury issues. He started in the match at the San Siro where United kept a clean sheet, Dan Burn scored as NUFC hammered eventual semi-finalists PSG 4-1, whilst he was in the team that lost 1-0 to eventual finalists Dortmund.

Fine margins and a terrible VAR decision in Paris prevented Newcastle United from progressing BUT Dan Burn and his teammates showed they were every competitive at Champions League standard.

It is laughable how the journalists want to disrespect the opposition to try and prove their points about Dan Burn and Thomas Tuchel. Making out that Albania are pub team level.

Albania were at the Euros nine months ago and handed the toughest of groups, unlike England, as usual. Albania took the lead against Italy before losing narrowly 2-1, then drew 2-2 with Croatia, before losing narrowly 1-0 to eventual champions Spain. Gareth Southgate was handed the easiest group possible and yet lucky to crawl through eventually. If England had been handed the three group opponents Albania were given, I doubt we’d have even progressed under boring boring Gareth.

BBC Sport invite visitors to mark all the players in each match and these were the collective average marks out of 10 for the England players against Albania:

Pretty fair I think, Dan Burn rated fifth best, which I reckon is fair enough. As I say, he didn’t have a nightmare, he did ok overall. There was no ‘proof’ of lacking international quality, whatever that is.

These are the Whoscored automated ratings for the match:

A little generous generally on the England team but Dan Burn rated fourth highest of the home players.

The embarrassing transparent media agenda against both Thomas Tuchel and Dan Burn has been brutally exposed.

If Friday night was some great example of a terrible performance, tactics and team selection, then the fact is that we saw 50, 60 or more examples under Gareth Southgate.

Thomas Tuchel, Dan Burn and England will improve, this is just the first step.

Nothing I have seen tells me that manager and player don’t belong in the national set-up.