tom_avfc

Having a pitch like this in a World Cup final anywhere would be ridiculous but in England I’m not sure how they’ve even managed to create a pitch so slow. Winning the toss has won this game as you could see the pitch getting visibly worse even during the New Zealand innings. England have batted pretty stupidly but when Colin de grandhomme is looking like one of the best bowlers in the world you’ve got to ask questions of the pitch. At least buttler is looking to bat the way all of the English batsmen should have been.

Oh, I completely agree with that - I don't think it was a foul either but I'm pretty sure that the foul on the keeper was given and not handball.

I'm assuming it was given as a foul on the goalkeeper. Not sure I agree with it as the keeper never had full control of the ball. I guess the fact that she had two hands on the ball and got hit pretty hard by the attacker has swung the ref's decision.

But you'd have two lanes of queuing traffic which had nowhere to go and were all trying to pull across into one lane of cars which would be moving if it wasn't for the fact that there were two lanes of cars trying to get into their lane. I'm not sure how this would speed anything up at all since wherever the cars were queued only one car would be able to continue once the two lanes were closed. Surely the flow of traffic would be much better if as soon as drivers are aware of the two lanes being closed they move across into the open lane allowing for traffic to flow as smoothly as possible. Sure, if everyone on the road was nice and polite, cars could filter through into the open lane one after the other but, given what a lot of road users are like, asking for this to happen consistently with 3 lanes of queued cars (which likely had been stuck for a large amount of time) is pretty unlikely and impractical. I'm not sure how it's not easier for cars to get across into the open lane as soon as possible and keep moving. If everybody did this then once cars had been let in the traffic would flow and wouldn't be stopped by the people who speed down the closed lanes and nip in.

Well other than the fact that there'd be hundreds of cars trying to filter in at the end which would form the same queue further back. Trying to get cars to filter in from 2 lanes into the 1 open lane would also be a bit of a nightmare I'd have thought. I'd imagine you'd just end up with three lanes of queuing traffic with all cars aiming to get into the 1 open lane at the last minute rather than one lane of queuing traffic with the selfish lot driving as far down the road to nip in last minute like you get at the moment.

Yeah I’m not sure how he’s not in the squad. England must have some phenomenal young centre backs if Tuanzebe can’t get in!

If you're purely watching Netflix do you have to have a TV licence? I thought you only needed a TV licence to watch live TV and iPlayer. May be wrong but I always thought this was the case.

Whilst true to some extent the BBC do have to justify what the licence fee is being spent on. I believe that making this tournament accessible to as many people as possible is a good use of licence payers money to be fair. I know there's always going to be a load of nay-sayers who want nothing to do with women's football but any attempt to increase interest can only be a good thing for me.

Well there’s that reason and there’s also the reason that there’s little to no coverage of women’s sports in mainstream media and on most television channels. Admittedly it is getting better but how can you expect people to have heard of people who are rarely reported on? I’ve enjoyed the games I’ve seen so far of this World Cup. Also, interesting to note given the complaints made about standards of goalkeeping being farcical that there was 1 goal in the two games today. Also, Scotland’s keeper had a great game against England yesterday.

I thought we dominated the first half totally and should have been at least two up. We’re the better side second half too without really creating much. Finishing has let us down as otherwise we’d be looking at a convincing win.

It really seems like there’s an agenda amongst many in the British media to try and discredit VAR as much as possible and it’s pretty tedious. How can anybody not see that that is a foul and a correct decision. I just don’t get why anybody would have an issue with that decision.

Why have commentators seemingly been told to criticise VAR every time it’s used. Pretty obvious foul by Wilson so the goal gets disallowed and Martin Tyler goes on a rant about how everyone will be falling over for some reason. Another good use of VAR but it’s annoying that it’s against England again!!

One goal wasn’t enough to teach us?!

Yeah we’ve made the same mistake about 5 or 6 times this game. Cant argue with the Dutch being ahead though in all fairness.

Couldn’t agree more with this. A much better watch than friendlies and again a correct decision which has made a difference to the outcome of a knockout game.

That was a bit silly. Don't you know that there's a Jed Steer thread on here for that?!!

You'd like to think we have accountants at Villa who use hedging/forward contracts to mitigate against this risk. Like you said the drop isn't too much this year but I'd have thought it was standard practice amongst any big company dealing with exchange rate risks to mitigate against a fall in one currency's value.

I'd argue what the alternatives are to calling up Fabian Delph and Hudson-Odoi when he was being called up. There hasn't been anywhere near as many withdrawals from international squads in the Nations League which has meant that for the most parts we've been playing our strongest team against the strongest team from other nations. The addition of more meaningful international games as opposed to pointless friendlies is a good thing for me and it seems like the players have taken to the new competition and its produced some great games of football. Even taking yesterday as an example, the Portugal vs Switzerland game was a good game which if it had been an international friendly there is no way I would have watched and there is no way that half of the players playing would even have been there.

Whilst I agree with a lot of what you're saying I don't have too much of an issue with the fact that first 11 selections have become less interesting. I don't find it interesting to have players like J'Lloyd Samuel, Rickie Lambert, Jay Bothroyd and Dominic Solanke receiving unwarranted full England caps in games where the entire first 11 is taken off after half time. The Nations League has been competitive with some great games between evenly matched sides and I prefer it than a week off in the season to watch pointless friendlies with effectively reserve international teams. Completely agree re UEFA greed but short of making more games meaningful I'm not sure how the issues around devaluation of international caps and the continued withdrawal of international players could be resolved.

Really strange decision. The defender did clip his heel which made the striker trip himself up but I’m not sure how he could have avoided it.

Was never a free kick and not sure what the keeper was doing to be fair. Switzerland have started the better team but haven’t taken their chances.

Yeah I'm not arguing that he couldn't have been contacted. I'm also not sure why we wouldn't have contacted him given that we had almost a full week from promotion until we announced the players being released.

I'm not sure how the news was out on Tuesday when we only found out on Saturday? People on here were convinced that he was going to be offered a new deal up until Saturday. Why would we break news to the media which nobody reported until after the official confirmation on the Saturday?

Yeah I'm struggling to see the major issue there. He's basically used standard wording which is probably used for any customer, realised his mistake and put through the cancellation over live chat as requested.

VAR is completely different to the goal line technology. I think there's been numerous examples of where VAR has worked particularly well this season. We would have had a different Champions League finalist this season if it wasn't for VAR. To be honest I'd like to think that the Premier League wouldn't continue to be the only major league not using VAR and I'd say the same thing if we weren't in it.