you are bunch of whinging pussies

Cos I put Wiltshire rather than Wilshere in my England team last week. And got ribbed!

 

ahh, can see how that would have made your squad a bit top heavy!

 

We didn't actually play badly. We created a lot more clear chances than we did against Russia & should've won.

The key point that everyone seems to miss when they say 'Wales beat these that means we're ****' is that Russia & Slovakia believe they can beat Slovakia & go for the win leaving space, against us they sit 10 men behind the ball & make it hard for us & we aren't the only ones struggling to break teams down, look at France, Germany & even the Spanish in their first game.

Some of the criticism I've seen tonight of certain players has baffled me. Sturridge for one, the lads playing out of position & has still managed to create 2 clear chances through outstanding passes & almost got 2 goals through clever movement.

According to someone's post that I read on Twitter the ball from Dier that came from straight behind him & dropped over his head was 'a sitter'. You see very few of them types of goals, anybody who plays will tell you how hard a chance like that is to take first time.

As for Henderson & Wilshere, they're both coming back from long spells out injured & understandably looked a bit rusty, I don't really get the criticism of them 2, surely it should be aimed at the manager for picking players not near 100% fitness?

And Chris Smalling, he balls'd up for Russia's goal & almost cost us tonight but apparently John Stones can't get in this side because he makes too many mistakes.

Anyway, Hodgson messed up in not picking Rooney & Alli from the start, whether that cost us or not it's hard to say but it means we're in the tougher side of the draw with Italy, France, probably Germany & 2nd place in the Spain / Croatia group. I'm a believer in winning the game then resting a few like the Welsh did tonight.

 

The priority is to hit form in the knockout phase for once. The likes of Italy, Spain and Germany don't lose any sleep over not winning their groups. Playing the runner up in Group F isn't a bad draw. It's difficult to find a sequence of results where Portugal can actually finish second.

Edit: Iceland win by the same margin or better than Portugal do or Portugal have a higher scoring draw than Iceland do

 

Ive been nonplussed about the national team.

Too many players getting picked on past reputation rather than form.
I often wonder how much influence the bean counters have as there is this continual obsession trying to shoe horn tge biggest shirt seller into the team...

Only reason i want them to do well is cos of the 1000s of loons whove saved up over the last couple of years to go watch them

 

So good they hardly produced a decent cross worthy of the name in the entire 90 minutes. Corners were abysmal, rarely beating the man at the near post. Shooting was poor, only a handful on target and those were straight at the keeper.