Much as i enjoy laughing at 3 specific English teams' misfortunes I'm always a little wary that schadenfreude has a nasty habbit of backfiring. I'll wait and see how our season pans out first as i can think of a few people who will derive enormous pleasure in any failings on our part. Fingers crossed for a quadruple celebration throughout May .
A day at Wembley would be good, but let us hope we do not need to go to have football from the Premiership next season.
i will not be in the country and if we go up getting tickets will not be as easy .but i think most of us just want what is best for the club (and i did not say we would win at wembly )
I note that the distance from Iceland to Kazakhstan is about 5000 km. is this the greatest distance between to. Uefa countries? On a similar note for the reverse fixture I would imagine that a visit to Iceland will be a real culture shock for the Kazak players. I assume that the Icelandic players are more cosmopolitan.
The Iceland team for the game on saturday has no footballers playing for local clubs, All are in Europe except Viðar Örn Kjartansson who is with a Chinese team. Ragnar Sigurðsson plays for Krasnodar in Russland, but that is between Ukraína and Georgia so almost Asia.
I'm sorry ak, but seeing names like Ragnar and Viðar makes me think of Kirk Douglas,Tony Curtis & horned helmets (which I know vikings never wore). The mental image of a early cross coming in and the ball sticking to one of the horns, then deflating, in the the 6-yard box is overwhelming......
Is Archangel Nkunu a good player? KA have signed him from Hendon. We have also Amos Kabaya. Google knows neither.
"A lot of teams around Europe will be looking at this team and will be frightened." Am I the only one to find this statement pompous? It is like England hasn't really moved on from the eve of the games against Hungary in 1953 and 1954. Since the World Cup England have played seven and won them all, conceding only two goals in the process - which on the face of things is very good. The worrying thing is the standard of that opposition listed here with current FIFA ranking (and UEFA): Norway 70 (34) - surprised me how low Norway currently are. San Marino 181 (52) Switzerland 12 (10) Estonia 87 (39) Slovenia 48 (29) Scotland 39 (24) - will always play their best against England. Lithuania 94 (40) England are 17th and 12th respectively. Unfortunately England have only met one team positioned higher in the rankings and a 0-2 scoreline on their patch is something to shout about, but I don't think too many of the top teams will be worried about England just yet. Let's see what happens against Italy. "You can only beat what is in front of you", is the famous quote.
No you are not the only one. This is the same old story. As and when we get to the Final of one of the major tournaments (which we haven't done for almost 50 years!) - then we can justifiably talk about frightening teams.......until then it's just hot air, which "a lot of teams around Europe" will be laughing at.
The only thing to admire about the English national team is the crowd attendances - over 80,000 pretty much every match is stunning. As for the team, do we have 1 player who would walk into the Spanish, German or French sides? I don't think we do.
Harry Kane, and the other nations would have called him earlier but let him in more slowly ro care for his talent. Bastien Schwiensteiger was a similar young player. England do not frighten us. They will probably win but we will not be scared.
