As we are being smutty I read in this morning's Times that Britain's naturists have had an "upswing in members".
Sweden offered very little and if we had lost we would have been massively disappointed. If by "far from it" you mean far from how bad the actual poor quality if their team looked on paper, I agree. However, in comparison to any "good" teams left in the tournament they were bad. If you believe we were up against strong opposition playing well, fine, I won't be so arrogant as to disparage an opinion, but I do disagree. Sterling was running around like a headless chicken and if that is what we want, then that is also fine. I think we have better options on the bench.
Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day. Nothing can get in my way! PS: I’m actually working connected yup to work patching servers. There are 5 of us around the country doing it (3 in Glasgow) and on a group chat. Every chat from me is signed off with It’s coming home
It's only just sinking in just what we've actually achieved, unbelievable. How brilliant is it that Southgate is the one who has brought some success. ****ing marvellous.
I watched that England v West Germany (they were still called that then) game in a pub in Covent Garden. That tube joirney home was the most depressing of my life. Got talking to this huge, very miserable England fan who said "I hope they do them on the terraces". Italia 90 was sort of the beginning of the end of hookigan culture in England though. The rave scene changed all that, getting pissed and smashing up the High Street became a very uncool thing to do.
Sweden reached a QF at the expense of Holland, Italy and Germany, so they weren't weak opposition in my book Do they have a squad like that of France or Belgium? No, of course not. But they got as far as they did on merit. We're obviously not going to agree on Sterling. You see a headless chicken, I see pace, touch, balance and guile...
Sweden had 3 shots on target to England’s 2. The difference between the sides was MOTM Jordan Pickford. Yesterday was by no means an easy day at the office for England. I’m not sure what point you’re making SS, you can only beat what’s in front of you, and 99.9% of England fans are pretty pleased we came through a difficult game.
Not in the sense of whether England will win or not, but as I've said before I do like watching the World Cup so I do care about who wins games.
Yeah I've seen more fights in the last few weeks then I can ever remember, including about a 40 man brawl on one of the main streets here where they were launching chairs and signs at each other smashing up cars and just generally being ****s, that was after the Panama game. Sun + beer + football is usually not a good mix. United country though
It didn't end there. The year Portugal knocked us out there was a lot of violence and a lot of destruction.
I’m going to approach the Sterling issue with as much friendliness as I can as I don’t want you to think I’m being aggressive/condescending/any other similar expression. I think it’s a good topic to debate, so please don’t take any comment here as “having a go” or a “personal attack” it’s just trying to explain how I saw Sterling, also how DTlW seemed to see him. I understand how some people get annoyed by Sterling. He misses lots of chances and innthe Colombia game his touch wasn’t there. Against Colombia he got into lots of good positions (this is good play) but his touch was poor and things didn’t work out, I’d have taken him off earlier, even though those runs he was making was helping Keep Colombia pinned back for large parts of the game. When he came off, Colombia had more freedom and pushed us back a little more. So, Sterling was poor, but important. In the first half against Sweden he was by far our most influential player (in my opinion). We started that game very cautiously and each time he got the ball he made a run directly forward at their defence, causing them to free up space for several England players. When he didn’t have the ball and England did, he made forward runs that created space and created several attacking chances. He ****ed them up, but without him creating them we would have been very stale in that first half. He should have scored or passed earlier on a few occasions, but his play was excellent, tactically and I would guess Southgate was giving him a huge pat on the back. So to summarise, I understand why people who saw him miss chances, or fail to hit the good final pass, think he was poor, but in my opUnion he was excellent tactically for the team and one pass or one finish away from being our hero. Yes he is meant to score or assist, but the fact he didn’t, doesn’t make his performance poor, it makes it just short of perfect. Sweden weren’t very bad, we just managed to not allow them to be so rigid, a lot of that down to Sterling’s performance Food for thought, or not? It would be good to hear if you think this is a feasible suggestion @spacedsaint
