VillaChris

I love that vid for the simple fact that of the first 5 action clips three are of him getting the ball and simply laying it off to a team mate (including a really nice crossfield ball to Hutton). Do people know who he is on the pitch or are they just confusing him with Bacuna or Sanchez?! Edit: Looks to have a really nice cross on him aswell from the under 21 highlights.

Newcastle against Liverpool play a very similar game that we did v Man. City. The difference is they from time to time crossed the halfway line to see what happened and managed to get a goal. We didn't want to and were delighted with a 0-0. I thought with all the injuries Bournemouth would go down but they seem to have stumbled across something with Stanislas and King. Pace in the final third, another thing we have very little of with Gabby not being bothered and Adama not trusted to start.

It's been poor for a long while at the club but gets worse the fewer match winners we have in the team as we're now seeing week in week out.

Leicester game was bad enough for them judging by results and performances.

Yes. Will be interesting to see who the 4/5 strikers are in the squad...I'd go Rooney, Kane, Sturridge, Vardy and Walcott can fill in upfront or out wide. Obviously if Sturridge gets his 48th injury of the season then Welbeck will come in if he's alright as he's played well under Woy.

The thing with Germany is since the WC they've lost experience at the back, Mertasacker and Lahm. Some of the back 4s they were putting out in qualifying looked a bit weak so think a team will exploit that, still fantastic quality in the final third.

Arter surely? No surprise their results have started to pick up since he came back from injury. I have to say if I was a neutral I'd want Bournemouth to stay up ahead of us. Infact for most neutral Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland must be the dream bottom trio as we're all dreadfully run and it's always amusing to see big teams get relegated. All three of us have brought very little to the league in recent years with the awful football played.

Has to be France for me. Home advantage worked for them last time and they have an easy group so can build momentum. Germany will be strong contenders of course and interesting to see how Spain react given the last world cup and they've lost some key players. Love watching the euros, said before I prefer it to the world cup but the 24 teams does dilute the quality a bit.

The ironic thing is this isn't even close to Bournemouth's first choice 11...that would be Tyrone Mings at left back, Calum Wilson starting as lead striker with Gradel playing as one of the wide forwards. All out injured for the season. I was surprised to read today that someone in good form like Stanislas only actually started 6 times for them in the championship last season so the line up they're playing now is weaker than last season for them. I actually thought a few weeks ago they'd finish bottom, were shipping so many goals and didn't have much threat in final third but looks like that mad 3-3 draw with Everton has changed their season.

Disagree. 5-6 years ago the top teams had fantastic defensive units hence how well they did in CL. Man. United had VDS- Neville-Rio-Vidic-Evra. I accept the injuries are giving it a wierd look but even when everyone is fit it's not near the quality of that apart from keeper. That's not to mention what Man. United had in attack...Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez etc... Chelsea had a younger Terry with Carvalho and other legends like Terry and Drogba running things in the final third. Liverpool in 08/09 should've won the league. They had the best striker in the league in Torres and a fantastic midfield trio of Mascherano, Alonso and Gerrard but Benitez focused too much on defending so they drew far too many games and let Man. United back in. Only Arsenal you could say are a similar standard now to back then but with still the same fatal flaws when it gets to the crunch. Typical that was the era when we had the money and manager to threaten the top 4. If we had those two in this present league I'm sure we'd be capable of 4th.

If R.O.I can get 4 points off Germany in qualifying they're well capable of getting a draw off Italy imo. I do accept it's different in the real thing to qualifying where there is margin for error. Think Belgium will have too much for them with Hazard and Lukaku running at that defence but it's possible for 4 points from the other two. Norn Iron are the only team with no chance of going through from these shores but then just being there will be a massive party for them.

We've just lacked belief and bottle since the Leicester game, that 20 minutes has killed our season. I don't think we'd be that high in the league even if we'd won that afternoon but we would've had 7 points and I can't believe we'd have gone on such a bad run. At least with 12-13 points they'd still be hope, the task wouldn't look so monumental as it looks now.

I think we can scrape some draws over xmas like Southampton game given the teams we'll be playing. It won't be enough though, even winning two games and we won't be close to getting out of the bottom 3, just need that to stay in touch.

Reminds me a bit of Barry actually, can cover multiple positions really well but lacks the pace and mobility to really be elite in one area.

This is a really good time to play Man. United, don't all laugh but I actually think we'd get something off them with the line up they have out. I did think with at least what they had out at least in attack they could outscore Bournemouth or just draw the game. Typical one of the rare occasions you actually want Man. United to win a game, they fail dismally. Our task looks to be now to finish above Norwich and both NE teams. We aren't capable of that.

Ireland is the group of death but don't think Czech one is far behind as Croatia are a good pot 2 team based on their line up (if not their performances) and Turkey are a random team as Czechlad knows....Don't think Spain will win all three games in that group.

Pretty much Bournemouth winning back to back games would be massive for them.

Yeah I remember that, Ivanovic should've got a red card, we should've had a penalty at the end. That said we got a good run of decisions in the game at VP the same season which predictably the media and Mourinho noticed.

Would hope not, let's see if he can spark something off the bench rather than just walk straight back in the 11, it's bad enough Gabby will probably do that. Llori made bench last match.

Yes Verrati is very good, silly to forget him. Anyone who plays for Meelan automatically gets discounted as they are a woeful team atm. Yeah Insigne's alright but hasn't kicked on last 18 months imo. I do like Candreva though. Worth remembering how much Seria A has declined last 10 years, even now the premier league is still of a better standard despite it's own decline so the English young players are playing a higher standard of opponent than what the likes of Napoli are playing. Also worth remembering not many of them are playing champions league football either. I was more commenting on their last squad....strikers like Okaka playing for Anderlecht, Gaccherini got called up aswell despite doing little at Sunderland, Giovincio getting called up despite being in the MLS now, it's hardly selecting players from the highest levels.

Will they change kick off times for some of these? I remember World Cup England-Italy was going to kick off at 2am but they brought it back to 11pm. England-Wales at 2pm on a Thursday...there's going to be about 5 people working on that day lol. Wouldn't shock me if it swops with one of the low key evening games.

I did the Portal thing and got informed in July that it had been unsuccesful. Did they do another draw of tickets....or did you just forget to check until now?!

Just look at the Italy squad aswell...Yes they still have Buffon, De Rossi, Chellini, Pirlo (I think?) but they're all in their 30s now.Do they have anyone decent under 25? If anyone has a problem with youth development it's them.

It's mad what happened to him, seemed to score every week in 12/13. Worth thinking about with Vardy being lauded to the high heavens.

Sweden looks a nailed on 1-1 draw to me, both teams are uninspiring to watch apart from Zlatan. Key game will be Italy, I look at that Italy squad and think that's the worst I've ever seen, much poorer than what they had in 2012. There's no inbetween with Italy in major tournaments, they either make the final or bomb out in the group stages. France are taking the mickey with their group so they can build momentum but there's some fantastic match ups in the other groups. Also how much more exciting is it to have other home nations in it apart from England? Makes the other groups more interesting. Shame the qualifying format is awful, they'd be some classic games if just two teams went through.