Barry the Badger

This is tremendous.

Wow, I bet you were quite excited when you discovered that.

It will be Hammond.

I'm not convinced that he was, not at first. I think people were generally pretty positive about the idea of having the youngsters in the reserves playing the same system as the first team, and all the stuff that went with that. It was only when he started sabotaging it by alienating the few experienced players we had at the time, and putting blind faith in young players that were clearly not ready, that people turned on the plan.

Those would be some pretty bloody serious contract talks if they lasted two weeks!

I've been to Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstalls River Cottage Canteen in Axeminster and the food was bloody lovely. Also think Heston is mental but a total genius.

I would be interested in seeing Bundesliga statistics for free-kicks scored before and after the adoption of the World Cup ball.

He winds me up. Come on Marcel, you weren't that Ghanaian when you chose to play for FRANCE were you??!

My personal favourite was the commentator saying during the England v Germany game "How many of these German players would get into this England side, one or two perhaps?" erm.... try seven or eight, at least.

Schweinstieger absolutely ran the game against the Argies.

No excuses, just patience.

The ball is generally out of play for 20-30 minutes of a 90 minute game. Not exactly non-stop is it? You have a point if we are talking about video tech being used for fouls, offsides, was it a corner or a goal kick etc.... But just using them for deciding whether the ball was over the line or not is hardly going to cause massive delays.

I'm looking to get a band together and need a drummer and a bass player. I have mostly just recorded stuff by myself since my last band ended a couple of years ago but keen to get something sorted again now. Here are a few of my tracks (which a friend has kindly hosted) to give you an idea... I guess it would be called punk/indie rock, never been very good with genres. http://www.mortom.org/jc/1_Ask.mp3 http://www.mortom.org/jc/2_Tunnel_Vision.mp3 http://www.mortom.org/jc/3_Stay_Young.mp3 http://www.mortom.org/jc/4_Unobtainable.mp3 Anyway, if you're interested give me a shout. Would be useful if either bass player or drummer could sing backing vocals but no worries if not. Cheers

I could see those f*cking counter attacks coming before any of our apparently world class players could. Whats more I would have dealt with them better. Badger for England.

Those kids are absolutely mental.

He is playing the same players and system he played for much of the qualifying campaign, during which we were f*cking awesome. In fact, here is the team when we beat Croatia 5-1, notice anything? That's right, Gerrard played on the left, and we tore them apart. Robert Green; Glen Johnson, Matthew Upson, John Terry, Ashley Cole; Aaron Lennon, Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard; Emile Heskey, Wayne Rooney

They are opening late on the last 3 days of the month to allow for renewals.

I honestly don't think individual players would have made any difference last night, the whole mindset of the team was wrong and that would have affected anybody who came on in my opinion.

I think we should take the money we keep paying these managers, and use it to get the worlds best sports pshycologist.

But he played Cole in qualifying.

That was utterly awful. As per usual when it comes to the big games England look absolutely crippled by a fear of doing anything wrong. The pub were showing the qualifying dvd before the game and we really did play some great football, some lovely one and two touch moves that led to goals. Last night there was nothing of this, the players were just going through the motions, but doing it badly.

Mark Peters may also have been labeled as the next Owen, but I definitely remember talking with a guy on a train who was telling me about the buzz surrounding McDonald and how amazing he was going to be.

I remember many years ago being told we had "the next Michael Owen" coming through the acadamy and that people were very excited by him. It turned out to be Scott McDonald.

Fail.

Whilst I know some people who can't renew due to the installment plan, I also know at least as many people getting a Season Ticket who didn't have one last season. I think the numbers will hold up.