LondonLax

5 minutes ago, Zatman said:

His name is Mahrez who caused havoc as a sub at times

Gundogan used to be the difference in tight matches like this. 

12 minutes ago, MachoFantastico said:

The lack of any real quality in this game as been shocking given both sides. 

They obviously cancel each other out to a certain extent. 

You watch either of these against a mid table side and suddenly the gulf in class shows. 

6 hours ago, adam67 said:

I watched the Sky feed of our game against Wolves yesterday.

Anyone notice how many times the in studio after our game the women (sorry don't know her name!) mentioned how Manure were looking to catch Villa by beating Brentford...runs to phone checks table. We are at the moment 11 points ahead of them... Its absolutely killing Sky that that lot are doing so badly.

Me as Mc Donald's say....I'm loving it!!!

Sky don’t give a **** but they know that at any one time a large chunk of their audience are Man U fans (or some other ‘big 6’ club). 

They are just playing to the biggest portion of the crowd who ultimately buy their subscriptions. 

8 hours ago, Genie said:

I am surprised Trump has still not returned to Twitter, sorely he will have a much bigger audience for his bullshit agenda there.

Twitter are a rival to his truth social platform which he just floated for something like $6billion. He doesn’t want to promote a rival company. 

He was all about his pace, the way he could make runs in behind to the byline and lay it back into the box was deadly.

He’s 31 now and coming off a bad hamstring injury, if that electric pace is not coming back he’ll not be the same player anymore. 

We were in control other than that one Martinez save in the first 20 mins. 

Played well.

Spurs will probably put about 6 past that Luton defence at home

Brentford will be a tricky away fixture for Man U though. 

The Premier League can’t alter the table for other leagues. 

15 minutes ago, Zatman said:

He is limited at times but he has a lot of Premier League experience, is in his mid 20s and has an English passport and currently playing for a team in the top 6 

I doubt a mid table Premier League club are going to spend big money on Cash, they will be looking for better value elsewhere. A top club is not going to come in for him and no club outside the Premier League will be able to afford his wages. 

There’s plenty of speculation about Russia having FSB officers on location during the attack. The guy who arrested and cut off one of the terrorists ears certainly does resemble a guy recorded at the massacre calmly watching it unfold. 

5 hours ago, sidcow said:

It has to be some mechanical failure, or a deliberate act. 

There were apparently 2 local pilots on board plus of course the captain abd senior officers. 

It's hard to believe that much expertise amongst so many people didn't realise they weren't in the middle of the channel. 

The crew issued a mayday signal which alerted the traffic controllers that the ship was having a mechanical failure. The traffic controllers were then able to stop traffic approaching the bridge, but there were 7 cars that had already gone too far. 

8 minutes ago, villarule123 said:

 

Wow. 

You now get money for generating clicks on Twitter 

4 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I don't think England particularly underachieved in 2008 to 2016, no.

I think there's an argument we could have done better in some of those tournaments, but I think we're talking fine margins.

We were terrible in 2014 for example, and could have easily been better, but I don't think Gareth Southgate is getting us out of that group, and plenty other managers would have struggled as well by the way. That was such a poor England side. So we'd still exit at the group stage.
2016 we should be beating Iceland but we're not getting past the QFs so we're talking one round more. It's not like we could have won the tournament in the same away as we could have in 2004

2010 we go out at the same stage unless we won the group in which case we probably go out in the QFs instead. Again we're not a tournament winning team

 

The difference now is the team is good enough to win tournaments, and we're not doing it. Again Southgate derserves some credit, I've never said otherwise. Getting us to semi finals and finals is still nothing to sniff at. But a slightly better manager would have delivered a trophy by now.

Yeah you could argue he's underachieving by the same margin previous managers underachieved by. But now the cost of underachieving isn't missing out on a quarter final, it's missing out on a trophy. So naturally that stings more

I don’t think you can expect to win a tournament and claim he has underperformed by not. Losing the final against Italy at Wembley is the only match that sticks out at a tournament and it was on very fine margins.

England 2018 was virtually the same squad who were humiliated by Iceland so perhaps he overachieved in that tournament? In Qatar they went out to my pre tournament favourite in France (again on fine margins with your captain and best player missing a penalty). I don’t think you should claim he underachieved in Qatar. 

So, as you yourself noted, England should have gone further than they did in tournaments from 2004-2016 but since Southgate I would argue they have been going about as far as you’d expect them to (with a frustrating penalty shootout loss in the 2020 final being the biggest disappointment). 

9 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Yeah that's fair. I'm not as confident (I think the England team from 2010 to around 2016 just got worse and worse) but it's not a mad suggestion.

However I don't think they would have got much further. 2010 for example if we'd topped the group we'd get Ghana and the Uruguay. I doubt we'd win both of those games, so it's still a QF exit

So to summarise, we all agree England underachieved in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2014 and 2016 (I had forgotten them losing to Iceland ) then Southgate shows up in 2018 and suddenly they are making semifinals and finals of major tournaments. 

Just now, Stevo985 said:

Agreed on 2008 and 2014

I don't think that England team beats 2010 Germany regardless of who is manager

It wouldn’t surprise me if a manager like Southgate would have topped that group in 2010 and avoided having to play Germany in the first knockout round. 

Instead a very average USA side top the group and got an average Ghana in the knockout. 

England 2010 WC - win one match (scraping past slovenia) to get pumped by Germany in the round of 16. 

England 2014 WC - win no matches and out of the tournament after round 2 of the group stages. 

2008 England couldn’t even qualify for the Euros.

It’s not hard to imagine Southgate doing better with those tournaments. 

On 21/03/2024 at 00:21, TomC said:

Scoring is up the past few years...

Emi has been here since 2020-21. That year, average goals per game was 2.69, in the typical range for the PL era. But the last three years in a row have set PL-era records. From a previous record of 2.80 in 2011-12, the last three years have been 2.81, 2.82, and this year so far, a record-obliterating 3.24 (highest since 1952-53 in the old league). That helps explain the difference from Bosnich.

Not to mention that Bosnich had Paul McGrath in front of him most of his time here.

And, while it's not a fair comparison because goalkeepers weren't expected to do such things back then, none of the other candidates have Emi's sweeper-keeper and passing-in-back abilities.

Bosnich was good, but I'd still take Emi any day of the week.

 

Probably because we play about 10 mins more injury time this season each match. 

Would also possibly explain why every club is in injury crisis. 

Southgate doesn’t get England ‘punching above their weight’, though he has them winning the matches you’d expect England to win on paper. 

I’m not his fan but to give him a little credit that is far better than his predecessors managed. I would also suggest this is potentially because international football is a unique set of circumstances/challenges for a football manager. What makes a good club manager doesn’t necessarily translate to international football tournaments.

It’s not actually a guarantee that a new manager takes England forwards from here. 

38 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Correct. I made this point a few pages back. If it was a solid colour nobody would care. 
 

It’s because it vaguely resembles and LBGT rainbow. They’ll say it isn’t, but we all know that it is 

Not the LBGT rainbow but the Telegraph was suggesting it resembles the trans and lesbian flags.

7 hours ago, Zatman said:

I dont think the creative change considered how many gammons that would get offended

I genuinely dont think a pro American company like Nike would offend on purpose that might make a backlash at home

Supposedly the first draft of the design had the flag as a rainbow colours and the FA knocked it back. 

Surely they must know En-gur-land football fans are not known for their progressive politics? It was an entirely predictable result. 

I don’t really know how such a big company like Nike could make such a mess of it. 

You have to wonder though why Nike have done this. They must have known what kind of reaction they would get changing a countries flag, they are not completely tone deaf.

Are they marketing on the idea that all publicity is good publicity? Was it a boozy long lunch dare between design executives? I can’t imagine this kit is going to be a big seller for them though. 

4 hours ago, regular_john said:

Why would IS attack Russia?

Because of Russia’s help given to Assad in Syria killed a lot of them and went a long way to destroying their caliphate.They have also been attacking Iran recently, a close Russian ally.

The same branch of IS bombed St Petersburg a few years ago and Russia said they foiled an attack from them on a Moscow mosque a couple of weeks ago.