i fully understand the 'overpaid wa.nkers' argument....

Levelled at England players....in fact I agree.

But all footballers are overpaid ..... So how come a world class striker like Suarez can try his nuts off while our lot have hearts like peas?

Yes Woy should have never got the job as he is just a yes man. Yes Gary Neville should be nowhere near the England set up as he is just one of the previous abject failures at this level.

Stevie G has a heart like a lion for Liverpool but is like the lion on wizard of oz for England.

Ffs you tosse.rs ...... Hundreds of thousands a week and a life of riley and when the chips are down, you are fekking rubbish.

Quite frankly you lot (England players) are a national disgrace. But hey you don't care, you'll be back sha.gging sl.uts and raking in the cash from the premier league before you know it. God I fekking hate you lot right now.

In summary: bunch a w.nkers, just fekk off England players.

Summat needs to be done re Englands constant failure but what I don't know

Gutted

Hth

 

This is the sort of thing that winds me up about football.

It's all or nothing for some folk - we lose narrowly and we are "completely *****", well, no we aren't. We've played 2 games against teams we were fairly well matched against. When we equalised tonight I thought we looked like we'd go on to win, unfortunately it's Uruguay who get the break and the ball drops to a class striker.
We've played better in these 2 games than I recall for a long time in a tournament.

Football can be a game of fine margins, no more so than in these 2 England games.

 

We are shlte, that's why we never win owt again and again.

Hth

 

Wile we're on about players wages, (and any well paid person really I suppose) I heard the other day all the top earners pay over 80% of their wages into a pension to avoid paying 50% tax rate, so not only are they ***** they're robbing B'astards too.

 

Footballers are paid too much is such a pointless argument. It's market driven. They are paid fortunes for performing well for clubs, who themselves receive fortunes from gate receipts, TV and merchandise. The fact that these said millionaires narrowly lost to another bunch of millionaires is largely irrelevant. But it's a convenient stick to beat them with because we're all disappointed about another early tournament exit. Not that being paid a lot made them care any less, or that we lost due to lack of effort anyway. It's a lazy argument.

There are fine lines in football. Very easy to make excuses but when you take into account Rooney's free kick, the header against bar, the left foot shot, the arguable sending off, the ref who let them get away with murder we weren't far off. Had we been totally outclassed this tournament, or a complete shambles like in South Africa I'd be fuming. But I'm not because we narrowly lost to a better side and a side that is probably on a par with us. But we knew that was possible when the groups we're announced so it's not exactly anything to stamp our feet about.

 

It seems to me that you're missing the fundamental point. Yes, we narrowly lost to a better side, but that better side wasn't France or Spain or Italy or Germany or Holland or Portugal or Brazil or Argentina. It was Uruguay. A country with a population of 3.4 million. A very ordinary team with one good player. A team that had previously lost 3-1 to Costa Rica.

In 2010 Germany knocked us out, in 2006 Portugal on penalties, in 2002 Brazil, in 1998 Argentina on penalties, in 1990 Germany on penalties, in 1986 Argentina, in 1982 no one really as we didn't even lose a game. And that's my lifetime of watching the world cup. In 2014 it was a loss to Uruguay, in the group stages. A nothing side apart from a very good striker who had surgery on his knee just a month ago.

You appear to be arguing that this doesn't matter at all really, that everything is fine and we're doing OK. As much as there is a lot of unnecessary criticism, I can't understand what point you're making. This is our worst performance at the world cup finals since we entered the competition in 1950, when we hadn't a clue what we were doing, so ever really. Surely that requires an examination of what has gone wrong? Many theories are being put forward, many of which may be inaccurate, but they can't be any more inaccurate than stating everything's alright.

I know Spain have faired even worse, but that's on the back of 3 successive competition victories. That always tends to happen when a team has been so good for so long. Similar happened to France after their dominance. We appear to getting worse and worse. A steady decline taking us out of the elite countries in the world and in to the second and third ranking groups. For a country so dedicated to football, with the biggest attendances in the world and the most money in the game, the state of the national team doesn't strike me as something we should just shrug our shoulders about.

 

And when Roy gets laid of they'll stuff a couple of million in his back pocket while they do it. Massive incentive for the next bloke to care about whether he wins or loses.

 

Thing is he can only work with the players he's got at his disposal and unfortunately said players just arnt good enough, I think we are caught in between, our young players just haven't yet reached the maturity or experience of the opposition and our once world class players are now past their best.

 

Probably the one good thing about this tournament is that it is the end of the "Golden Generation". Cole, and Terry already gone with Lampard and Gerrard following very soon. Start again with the young ones for the Euros and build a new team around the emerging players (Stones, Sterling, Barkley, Flanaghan, Shaw, etc).

 

Well said!!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Some people appear to think losing all the time is acceptable as long as we 'give it a go'

well it is not I am afraid

hth

 

I'm certainly not shrugging my shoulders and suggesting everything is alright, wasn't how I intended my post to read anyway. I'm as disappointed as anyone but i think we need to sensible in how we analyse individual performances at a tournament. Prior to the South African world cup our qualification campaign was rosy, we had one of the best managers in the world and arguably some of the best players in the world. We performed abysmally and I was furious about it. Something was clearly wrong, whether it be the preparation, mood in the camp, manager...whatever there was clearly something a miss. And we weren't just beaten by the Germans, we were destroyed and were very lucky to make it out of the group.

This time round we had largely a different squad. In my opinion, a weaker squad full of relatively untested but promising individuals. My expectations were low and that was compounded by the positioning in a tough group with a strong Italian side and fair enough an ordinary Uruguay side but still one that won the last Copa America and have historically been pretty much on a par with us in terms of tournament success. Plus they have probably the best forward in the world at the moment (half fit or not)

I suggested that we'd do well to get out of the group. And it looks like we haven't. We were unlucky against Italy and although the performance was half as good, I believe we were a bit unlucky against Uruguay as well. So I don't take that as a green light to lay into the manager (who's not done a lot wrong) or the players (many of whom was their first tournament)

As for your point about our country underachieving, well can't argue with that and my own opinion is that it's predominantly a result of how kids are coached. I could go on for hours about that in fact but I separate this from the performance of the current crop of 20 something year olds. Clearly something needs to be done and whether the St Georges Park stuff etc. will make an impact I suppose we'll know in about 10/20 years. That said, we haven't necessarily gone out of this tournament as a result of inferior technique like we usually do. Lack of experience, nous and clinical finishing perhaps but neither Italy nor Uruguay outclassed us.

Perhaps I'm putting my head in the sand but I don't take last's nights result as the disaster some people do. This squad is a work in progress and will be better next time round. The hope is the promising youngsters actually fulfill their promise on the international stage unlike their predecessors.

 

I did read something on the BBC site the other day about Belgium. They completely redesigned their youth football and are now seeing the rewards. Kids are coached on technique rather than results - they scrapped league tables for under 9s (IIRC) and all kids teams play the same formation among other things.

 

I'd welcome all of that. I'm 31, my football upbringing was based on matches on full sized pitches at the age of 12 and upwards. Despite our coaches best intentions, the focus was on results rather than developing skills. All of us to a man were glad when the technical and tactical side of training was done and we could get into a game or shooting practice. I'm also lucky enough to have played a few games with an English team in Europe. This is obviously anecdotal but in my experience, their training/ pre match routine was based on ball retention and skills. We would cause the young Portuguese lads problems in the first half with high tempo, physical presence and shooting from distance. Then in the second half with the help of the heat they'd keep the ball from us and the goals would rain in. It was a microcosm of Englands experience in tournament football.

I do genuinely believe we're seeing improvement in technical ability of younger English players. Even in comparison to the last Euro's we've done our best to keep the ball on the deck and not revert to route one (last 10 mins aside) That's got to continue and be pushed from 10/11 onwards and not just for the lucky few who manage to get pro contracts. If that filters down to the youth levels I think regardless of the negative effect of the Premier League and all it's evils we'll start to see talented, technical footballers emerging.

 

That's my point. We're a county with a population of 53 million, football is our national sport, we have, maybe not the best, but the biggest league in the world in terms of attendances and club turnover, our second tier league is bigger than the top league in most countries, the sport is awash with money, yet we go in to a world cup thinking qualification from a group containing Uruguay and Costa Rica is unlikely. We've made one world cup semi-final in the last 48 years and things aren't improving, they're getting worse. Not since 1958 have we failed to qualify from the group stages and in that tournament we didn't actually lose a game. It's not that we're starting to get left behind, we were left behind a long, long time ago, it's that other nations are continuing to pull further away.

You say we have a squad of promising young players, but I don't see that. I see a few OK players, but no real world class talent. Nothing even close to that. I don't blame us for not having a Suarez. Players like that are few and far between, it's an amazing natural talent he's got and if we haven't got a player like that at this moment in time, that's just the way it is. But the rest of Uruguay's team was as good as ours. Suarez beat us, but Uruguay easily matched us. It's not even a particularly good Uruguay we were playing. We have a population more than 15 times that of Uruguay, I dread to think how much more we spend on the game than Uruguay, billions? trillions? who knows? yet they can produce an 11 who can easily match ours. They can't match Costa Rica, but we offer few problems.

I haven't had a go at the manager nor any of the players who were at their first tournament. I was utterly unimpressed with our captain, in both games, and said as much, but I don't think one post from me is going to hurt anything. You're right that last night's result isn't the disaster, it's the national game that's a disaster. A disaster that's been almost 50 years in the making.

Feel free to bring this post back to the top after Italy win their remaining group games, we beat Cost Rica and progress to the semi-final.

 

I agree with the reeve we should be winning these tournaments not hoping to get out of the group.still can't believe we didn't take terry and cole who are streets ahead of those that played yesterday,jagielka will never be international class while he's a hole in his arse.

 

But England don't play like that anymore, it's some crap interpretation of the retention game that is utterly ineffective.

Players that can't actually do anything bar pass it three yards are what the number of coaching badges are getting us.