Estonia V England

France and Portugal certainly don't. In fact France seem to fail spectacularly or with a whimper in every tournament. But anyway it's irrelevant. The suggestion that we should be disappointed with only winning by 1 against a **** team when other countries fail to win at all is daft, and the fact that some teams have done better than us at recent tournaments doesn't change that. If anything it makes it worse that those better teams than us have got worse results than us.

It was aimed at the general consensus on this board rather than anyone in particular. I seem to be in a minority on this board in not being completely hysterical over England only winning by 1, and this is an ongoing theme rather than just tonight. I think a few on here would rather we'd lose so they wouldn't have to put so much effort into being negative about it. People who are quite rational posters and make decent posts about City just turn into proper numpties when they're on about England.

 

I think you're fixating solely on the result, when most of the comments on here were (coming as they did during the game) about today's performance.

I agree with you there.

I think that's a tad unfair, as you're implying that it's the same people moaning about both things, when generally it's not.

 

France and Portugal certainly don't. In fact France seem to fail spectacularly or with a whimper in every tournament. But anyway it's irrelevant. The suggestion that we should be disappointed with only winning by 1 against a **** team when other countries fail to win at all is daft, and the fact that some teams have done better than us at recent tournaments doesn't change that. If anything it makes it worse that those better teams than us have got worse results than us.

It was aimed at the general consensus on this board rather than anyone in particular. I seem to be in a minority on this board in not being completely hysterical over England only winning by 1, and this is an ongoing theme rather than just tonight. I think a few on here would rather we'd lose so they wouldn't have to put so much effort into being negative about it. People who are quite rational posters and make decent posts about City just turn into proper numpties when they're on about England.

 

So tell me how and why are little Switzerland so much better than England. I don't mean their FIFA ranking is better than ours or their performance at the world cup was better, i know that already, but how and why. What motivates their team to shall we say punch above their weight ?

 

So tell me how and why are little Switzerland so much better than England. I don't mean their FIFA ranking is better than ours or their performance at the world cup was better, i know that already, but how and why. What motivates their team to shall we say punch above their weight ?

 

Fantastic performance in my opinion and Rooney was very unlucky not to bag a hat trick. I've seen/heard some whinging but we played some excellent stuff, specially in the first half, but just didn't take our chances. Lots of positives to take.

 

Since Euro '96 and our last semi final appearance in a major tournament France have won the World Cup, the European championship and have been beaten in a world cup final as well.

Portugal have reached the semi's of the world cup, the final of the Euro's once and the semi's twice.

I won't mention the big European nations like Spain, Germany and Italy.

Your lack of footballing knowledge astounds me, I wouldn't normally be so disparaging but seeing as though you want the throw insults around, such as calling other posters numpties, I feel as if it's justified.

 

Nobody is criticising the result.

We're criticising the performance. It was cack and uninspiring.

 

We were very poor, there were no positives to contrive from that sad show. We ran into each other, kept losing whatever shape they were supposed to be playing (Did they know?) and the goal should have been saved; even though it was well struck it was not a beater was it? Very poor showing and no excuses against tem men, but hey-ho, let's take positives shall we. If there is a game plan the players don't have the intelligence to execute it. Really, really poor!

 

To be fair he had us right last time out.

Look at the opposition. To me this still counts as one.

 

Just as with Yorkshire pudding, the quality can be anywhere between brilliant and crap, depending upon the ingredients used and the culinary skills of the chef.

 

Exactly.

As Waddle once said, the well worn excuse is being about getting ready for 2 or 4 years time.

The team we played today were truly awful. Truly awful. They drew recently with Gibraltar too.

Point is, we’re making no progress whatsoever as far as I can see.

We have a group that is probably the easiest in the entire section and within that, 2 /3 qualifying spots to take.

Qualifying from this group is no achievement at all.

Have England actually ever played well under Hodgson? If so, I don’t recall it.

Sick of hearing the c**t talking about all the positives.

 

This is the lowest point for me in all my years of supporting England since I knew what was going on in 1982. The only people to take positives from these games are trolls and saddoes, there are none, we are being ground into nothing and the damage will be felt for years to come.

 

I'm also surprised that we found a worse manager than Graham Taylor but it seems like the FA struck gold

 

Well I've been mentioning this for a while, but it kind of proves my point. If you look at the current Swiss squad, you'll see a fair amount of not-very-sounding-Swiss players:

Johan Djourou (born in the Ivory Coast, grew up in Switzerland)
Ricardo Rodriguez (born in Switzerland to Spanish and Chilean parents)
Francois Moubandje (born in Switzerland to African parents)
Gokhan Inler (Switzlerland's captain, Turkish parents and represented Turkey at youth level)
Xherdan Shaqiri (born in Yugoslavia, got a Swiss passport from being naturalised and holds dual Swiss/Albanian natiionality)
Valon Berhami (moved to Switzerland aged 5, was born in Yugoslavia to Albanian parents)
Blerim Dzemaili (moved to Switzerland aged 4, born in FYR Macedonia)
Granit Xhaka (born in Switzerland to Albanian parents, older brother plays for Albania)
Pajtim Kasami (born in FYR Macedonia to Albanian parents, moved to Switzerland very young)
Admir Mehmedi (born in FYR Macedonia to Albanian parents, moved to Switzerland aged 2)
Haris Seferovic (born in Switzerland to Bosnian parents)
Josip Drmic (born in Switzerland to Croatian parents)

Now, obviously given what happened in the aforementioned countries in the late eighties and the early nineties, there was always going to be a lot of immigration. But the above players all play at the top level, I'd go as far to say that a couple are almost World Class players.

The answer clearly isn't "import as much foreign talent as possible", but face it, the pie eyed dreams of winning tournaments with blokes called John Smith and Alan Gardener are long gone. We moan so much about immigrants and other ethnicities (I use 'we' in the pejorative, obviously most sane people are fine living beside other cultures - not politics), but the fact is, there's going to be a wealth of talent coming through somewhere because a lot of these young foreign lads have grown up watching and playing football. If we don't nurture them, they'll go somewhere where they can become a pro footballer. We now have so many different ethnicities in this country, but how many players of middle eastern or East Asian descent do we see coming through into the Premier League, or even the Football League? With all the Polish, Romanian and Kosovans living in England, why don't we see any pushing through? Statistically, there must be a few good footballers in this country from different cultures and backgrounds. I can think of Michael Chopra and that's about it and he's now playing in India. Hell, look at City's academy, where are all the children of the immigrants that have come across and are now living in our City?

We don't do enough to nurture talent from other cultures. Whereas the likes of Switzerland, Norway, and Bulgaria, teams traditionally weaker than England are embracing it, England seem to be going further down the route of "if you weren't born here you can **** off."

France, traditionally one of the strongest footballing nations in the world, have a lot of dual citizenship players and there was some commotion a while back because there were too many "immigrants" in their squad. We're talking about players like Trezeguet, Benzema, Desailly, Zidane, even our own Hatem Ben Arfa being told at a young age they couldn't play because of their background. It was hearsay, no doubt, because it was never proven and while nobody can say for certain what's going on at grassroots level, there's clearly not being enough done to try and coax the best out of nationalised youngsters.

This link was the link to the story, broken in 2011, about France's racism claims: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13236864

I really want England to do well, as many of you know I follow the Faroe Islands internationally, but I do enjoy watching England, hell I've lived here all my life and I want to see them as an established force in World football, not a team of nearly there's and should've done betters. You're right, England should be better than Switzerland, but until they start casting their net wider for talent, there isn't going to be much to cheer about in the near future.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to you too Calgary. Sorry I missed you at Wembley. Just had my piece of pumpkin pie with icecream and it was brilliant. I'd say its an acquired taste though as I really didn't like it when I first had it.

I watched Scotland yesterday, mainly to see how Robby did, and he certainly deserved all the accolades he's been getting. What a fantastic signing. Watching England today was a real let down after watching Scotland attack at pace. I'm just praying the FA will have the sense to get rid of Hodgson and bring in someone who can get us playing creative fast moving football. Also I'm baffled Chambers is anywhere near the squad. On the other hand Delph is outstanding.

 

Joking aside, Hodgson should've said he had a niggle and wasn't 100%.

It's called player management.

Roy is an imbecile. Unless of course his intention was to humiliate one of his key players and/or bring the debate about playing too much football and/or the club v country saga to a wider audience. In that case he's a genius.

But I think I know which one he is......

 

sterlings just a shaun wright Philips clone

doesn't really do much,just runs about fast

 

That's really spectacularly wide of the mark.