Four more matches of commentators creaming themselves over that overrated greased rat. Effing marvellous...
They've got more than a 50-50 chance. Either Albania fail to beat Armenia or Denmark win their play off with another 3rd place team
Forgot Armenia were in the group....I'm all for opening up the tournaments but there really is some dross out there!
England are probably classed as dross once the tournament proper kicks off. It's all relative. I bet Wales have a better tournament than England.
It's all relative ...how much obnoxious, entitled jingoism will S4C spew forth to make Wales matches unbearable viewing for everyone? Will it be relative to the tsunami of bullshit that the BBC and ITV flood our living rooms with every other year?
How ****e were the Netherlands? Awful campaign for them, such a talented squad of players, strong possibility it was the last chance for the likes of van Persie, Sneijder, Robben and Huntelaar to feature in another major tournament, they'll be around 34 come the World Cup in 2018 and by then a lot of the promising youngsters like Depay, el Ghazi, Klaassen and co will probably be fully fledged internationals with others looking to take up squad places.
Am I the only person on here who never particularly liked Holland? Yes, they have some great players - but there's also been a remarkable number of dirty players to play for them over the years. As well as a long list of blatant divers (i.e. van Nistelrooy, van Persie, Overmars, Begkamp) they've been involved in some of the nastiest World Cup matches I've ever seen, namely the last 16 match with West Germany in 1990, the Battle of Nuremberg against Portugal in 2006 and the 2010 final.
Which all tells me that they were poorly managed. They needed a manager to give them license to play properly. It's been a waste of the players you mentioned (Bergkamp was one of my favourite players despite his allegiance) and add in Robben, VDV, Sneidjer, Kluivert. Not since the days of Gullit and Van Basten have they played to their potential.
Well, they did reach the WC final just 5 yrs ago, but their downfall has always been infighting, clashes of egos, etc.
Yet the 1990 match against West Germany was in the days of Gullit and van Basten - with Rinus Michels as coach, who (in theory) knew more about attacking football than Friday nights in Maidstone. The problem with the Dutch is that, with the exception of 1988, their tournaments go one of three ways: i.) Failure to qualify (1982, 1986 & 2002 World Cups, Euro 2015) ii.) Choke at a key stage (1974 final, Euro 2008 quarter final vs Russia, nul points from Euro 2012) iii.) Resort to outright thuggery (the aforementioned matches, plus things like Kluivert's elbow in 1998) Even with the talent at their disposal, plus a long list of the most blatant divers in world football as a backup plan, their tournaments always wind up falling into one of those categories - and what's most bizarre is that, when they resort to playing Speedball 2 on the pitch, it always backfires on them and they lose those matches anyway. Another benefit of the Dutch not qualifying is that it spares us their horrific national anthem. A shame that can;t be said for the musical war crimes of England and Portugal, really.
Palace drawing with west ham but are down to 10 men United 2 up at everton Villa commit hari cari v chelsea losing 1 nil at ht City 4 -1 up v Bournemouth before ht with a stirljng hattrick Soton 2 up v Leicester Wba nil nil with sunderland
Nice to see Rondon doing the right thing by our loanee yesterday: Could've been a painful landing, if he hadn't intervened.
Me yesterday: "Newcastle v Norwich? Who gives a crap about that? Not much of a game for the neutral."
