S-Clarke

There's nothing wrong with arrogance or having an ego per-say, but there's a line you can cross. Ronaldo/Zlatan etc did it on the pitch, so they can have as big an ego as they want - their careers are littered with wins. Then you have the other angle - Balotelli, Richarlison, Pogba etc. They had the ego, the arrogance, but never backed it up on the pitch so they were seen as a prick. Bellingham is on that line at the moment. He's still very, very young and will have some maturing to do. I hope he follows the Ronaldo/Zlatan direction rather than the others.

I wouldn't say £20-25m is going low ball, if the eventual value is £30m. You'd be a terrible negotiator. ''Sir, the value of the item is £50. What can you offer'' ''I bid £200''

If it happens, I think we're planning for O'Riley to be our statement signing of the window. He would be an excellent addition to our midfield, a pretty substantial upgrade to Smallbone in that position. We identified him last summer, somewhat unrealistically I'll add...but his contract was running down at that point and he wasn't off the back of the season he's just had. Martin and O'Riley are pretty close, can imagine there have been chats in the background over a period of time. If we can give Celtic what they want then he'll be ours.

Just on the other angle to this, why the fuck are Chelsea buying Kerion Dewsbury-Hall for £35m? Like, what sort of magical scouting recipe have they conducted to conclude he is the missing peice in attacking midfield when they already have Palmer, Mudryk, Gallagher, Lavia, Casadi, Chuckwumbka, Caidedo, Enzo who can all operate in that 8 or number 10 attacking midfield role. They are doing my nut in. There is no strategy there whatsoever.

Football is bonkers!

You can't be happy with watching that though! It's not possible for us to win a tournament by playing this bad, it is really awful - we just keep delaying the inevitable. It's been a really poor show. A decent side will turn us over without sweat, we all know it. We're just lucky that the draw has even fallen for us. Easily the luckiest team in the Euros up to now!

The most undeserved quarter final place I think I've ever seen. We were even fortunate to have got to the last 16! The performance for 99% was just inept, not good enough, not even close. Coached all wrong, players all over the place, shape all over the place. Load of utter shit. The way we managed the 2nd half of extra time was unacceptable really, everything about it was unacceptable. Feel for Slovakia, they deserved to win that by a couple.

We are clearly just sinking deep to defend this out, as per instruction. We had a chance to take this ET by the throat and just kill Slovakia whilst they were down and were chasing it, it's what the top teams do. We've somehow let them back into it. Honestly, we are, so, so badly coached it's untrue.

Never take off your goal scorer, no matter how bad he is playing. Management 101 for me. So at least he got that right.

This is hilarious actually. Slovakia have gone mentally, you can tell. Their body language is shot. Put them to the sword now. Feels a bit harsh as they did it all correctly for 95 mins. Football is such an odd game at times.

Jesus, how undeserved was that! Slovakia will be devested by that, they've done everything right. Great finish by Bellingham, but christ alive that is so unjust on football as a whole.

When Slovakia have the ball they look so much better than us. Still no changes.

First change was a forced one due to an injury, think that says all you need to know really.

How on hell have we not made any changes yet!! It's not fricking working, it hasn't all year!

He's made no changes. What is he waiting for? Bloke is a fucking wimp. He better hold back in Germany for a while after this, he will be less popular than Sunak. Good for Sunak I guess.

Lee Carsley lined up for his replacement apparently, the FA have a hard-on for promoting from within. Not sure anything changes even if Southgate goes.

The worst of the bunch from this tournament. I honestly don't think any changes fix this, the entire team and squad is disjointed and unbalanced. The coaching is utterly horrific. No tactical understanding of the modern game from any of them. They can throw on Palmer and Gordon, but if they follow the same horrendous coaching instruction then it's just pointless. Every single game we've played this entire calendar year has been absolutley inept. It's all broken quite deep and 'tweaks' in a single game at HT aint fixing this rabble.

If only we had Kalvin Phillips.

Absolutley deserved, should have been ahead by now. The England team is just not there, there's no fixing this. Kinda want them to put us out of our misery so I can enjoy the rest of the tournament.

I think Trippier is done at the top level, I include Newcastle in that too. Should have picked someone like Chilwell for this tournament.

Not as clear cut as that, books being fluffed again - it's basically a player swap deal, but on the books it looks as if both clubs have pocketed a decent sum on pure profit for a homeegrown.

So someone like Szmodics? I wouldn't include Crysensio Summerville as he's already beyond us price wise for this window. Szmodics could be attainable.

But at that point, you just have to ask what is attainable for us? We're not in a position to buy proven PL strikers, we probably never will be (that's why I wouldn't turn my nose up at Ings). Our best bet is taking a gamble on a young player from abroad, taking a gamble on a young player from this country, or taking a gamble on experience who is someone on their way down rather than up. All transfers are a gamble, but when you have $$$ you can have a safer gamble on someone like Haaland, Isak, Solanke etc - we don't have that, so we have to be much cuter. I wouldn't turn my nose up to either Ings or Delap as options on both ends of that spectrum.

I see what you mean, but yeah that's where we are at now. The 10-15m Mane's, Tadic's, VVD's we found in 2014/15 now start at around £30m. By all accounts the resale value on them will be much higher, but that's where the market has gone. If we're not able or prepared to enter that £30m market then we'll never be able to compete. I guess we are still a bit fearful given our clusterfuck Sulemana £22m signing, but that just boils down to utter shit scouting. We need to play in that £30m market once we're properly back and established (i.e. survive this year), otherwise it's pointless even being here.

All clubs have this cycle though. We had a golden period of our own when we were selling for profit, reinvesting, and then selling that for a profit etc. What Brighton are doing well at the moment will hit the stoppers at some point, it's absolutley inevitable. The fat lady started signing as soon as they lauded around the media about their profits last season. They're still light years ahead of us, but they'll be coming down a peg or two rather quickly in the next few years once their recruitment success starts drying up. (it's already started to)