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Wrong link, try this one https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvnyr75r48o

I'm off on holiday to Italy soon, and at least won't get teased as the simple come back is 'at least we were there'. It was all deeply disappointing. Which sub was it who came on and gave the sign with his fingers 5-4-1? FFS, just no outlet, let alone, as Saint Pete and others have said, not doing the basics right.

Assisted

I'd always assumed you were a bloke, sorry.

Well, I don't know a lot about Lewis and was worried that he would be an outsider who was saddled with handicaps but hopefully he will turn out to be a thoroughbred who can do the business furlong time...

Maybe steal Hull KR's (rugby league) Red Red Robin song? When the Lew, Lew, Lewis goes Dob, Dob Dobbin along... 😁

Video

“What we've lack for years is that controlling central midfield player, a player that can dictate the tempo, do the simple things well, keep the ball moving etc. Michael Carrick was the nearest thing we've had to that in recent years and IMO should have been the first name on Englands team sheet in those days. We dont seem to like those sort of players when we have them they get labelled as boring, sideways & backwards type players because they're not spectacular, exciting players who score goals and create chance after chance.“ JWP innit?

Is that view based on his scoring record at Ipswich?

With England ( thanks to their gutless manager ) waving a white flag last night, we'll then have a complete set.

Leicester are going to concede some comical goals this season. Good news for them though is that Vestergaard agreed to a mutual termination of his contract.

English Football DNA... ...long post. Apologies, anyway: I read that Soccernomics book a while back and they made a very (very) compelling case for England being about the ninth or tenth best team in the world. Rankings fluctuate based on performances but the basic 'DNA' or a footballing nation only changes with systematic support and gradual improvement. There's lots of reasons why a footballing nation such as ours with all our history and relatively large population doesn't do as well as we should. Not least Cricket, Rugby and the education system. So, on that note. I blame the class system. (As I do for fucking everything because I'm a pinko commie anarchist or something). Anyway, I asked the AI fella who lives my phone, if this was still the case and he said: The short answer is: less so than when Soccernomics was first published. The original argument was never really "England are bad." It was that England consistently overestimated itself. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski argued that, once you accounted for factors like population, footballing culture, wealth and historical performance, England looked more like the 8th to 10th strongest football nation, rather than a perennial favourite. That was a useful antidote to decades of "this is our year." A lot has changed since then. The biggest difference is England's youth development. After the failures of the 2000s, the FA invested heavily in: St George's Park. Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) academies. Better coaching qualifications. More technically focused youth football. The result has been a conveyor belt that simply didn't exist twenty years ago: Bellingham Saka Foden Palmer Rice Mainoo Gordon and many others. England have also become much more consistent at youth level, winning age-group World Cups and European Championships, which Soccernomics predicted should eventually feed through to the senior side. The senior results back that up: World Cup semi-final (2018) Euro finalists (2021) Euro finalists (2024) Deep run again at the 2026 World Cup under Tuchel, with England widely regarded as one of the four strongest sides in the tournament. The rating systems agree. England now sit around 4th in both FIFA and Elo, rather than hovering around 8th to 10th. That said, I think one part of the Soccernomics argument still holds. England's structural disadvantages haven't vanished: Football still competes with rugby and cricket in a way it doesn't in Spain or Argentina. Access to informal street football remains lower than in many countries. The Premier League is so wealthy that young English players can find first-team opportunities harder to come by. The English football culture and media still create extraordinary pressure around the national team. So I think the revised conclusion today would be: Around 2010: England were probably overrated by fans and media, and objectively about the 8th to 10th best football nation. Around 2026: England are genuinely among the top four to six football nations. They're not automatically the best, but they're no longer flattering to deceive. One thing Soccernomics got absolutely right is that footballing nations change slowly. France didn't become France because of one manager. Spain's golden era was the product of twenty years of coaching reform. Germany's post-2000 renaissance came from restructuring academies after Euro 2000. England's improvement looks very similar: a long-term change in the production line rather than a lucky generation. In fact, if Soccernomics were being rewritten today, I suspect England would be one of its success stories: an example of how a country's "football DNA" really can change, but only through patient, systemic investment rather than finding a single genius manager or a handful of exceptional players.

Parking tickets queuing for petrol on a forecourt, what the actual fuck? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cwy4xpy3kvwo

Tapes

Perhaps they’ll take it to the final, and the Spanish can wave one about Gibraltar 🇬🇮 back at them.

What are you talking about? It's a negotiating tactic and it's the same every season.

Hopefully this means Bazunu might actually have a buyer 🙏 https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/leicester-city-bazunu-martin-transfer-11048660

Agree with you about Venables, always gets the media praise from the media chums, but overrated beyond achievement as far as England are concerned. Wasn’t aware of the lack of substitutions. Believe me I wasn’t making a case out for him by mentioning 1996. In truth we were distinctly average playing at home, the Netherlands game aside. But the point I was making is that for the SF we did have a go ( Gascoigne a few inches from connecting stands out) rather than last nights effort.

Hope it isn’t us.

He’s got a point though, we always fuck it up. You go back to 1990 and Stuart Pearce wellying his penalty straight at the keeper, then there’s Beckham losing his shit and getting sent off, Rooney stamping on someone’s bollocks, there’s countless penalty fuck ups which is due to lack of technical ability/mindset. We have not even reached a World Cup final in my life-time and in our entire history won nothing without home advantage. Tuchel should take some blame for his subs but the England players just shat the bed and stopped playing as soon as they took the lead.

Not making a defence of his tactics or substitutions last night but there is some truth in this, as unpalatable as it seems. The England team have been ‘also rans’ for decades.

I wasn't defending him, he could and should have done more to stop what happened, but the players shat the bed as well once getting in front, no mistake about that. We have failed in games like this over multiple World Cups and Euros and it ain't just down to the managers although I know our fans love to think our players are great really and it's all down to poor coaching/tactics.

Hopefully a better work ethic than his uncle Winston

#DNA