benjii

I know what you're saying but, perversely, Vestergaard's ability on the ball meant we were over reliant on him IMO. Initiating moves should be what the central midfielders do. The best team on the ball, by far, in the Euros was Spain. Their centre backs play simple balls to Busquets and he knits play together. You don't need your centre backs to be taking people on and threading balls through the eye of a needle, you just need them to have a decent first touch and find a simple pass to someone better than them. That's where you need someone like JWP to step up and show some responsibility for creating things, rather than just playing the first 10 yard easy pass that he sees (usually back to the centre back). Romeu can knit things together but our other midfielders will need to do more. Being reliant on a centre back to be your play maker makes you easy to defend against, as our abysmal second half season form showed. So, Vest out, this lad in cheaply and spend the money on someone willing to put their foot on the ball in midfield is a good strategy for me.

I've been working on a reasonably chunky commercial arrangement with a very high profile English football club over the last couple of months and they've been a pain in the arse to deal with. Stupid, unrealistic contractual positions, and constantly changing their position on key commercial terms, as well as being quite slow. That's without having to deal with some greedy, dodgy player agents as well. So it's made me appreciate what a pain it must be trying to sort certain transfers out.

LOL! You think Hitler was real?! Use your loaf FFS!!!

It's not helpful to speculate. Please remember that everyone is entitled to be presumed innocent until proven Gylti.

Sounds as though CollinsDic will have to pack away the glow-sticks and ease of the eccies, come September.

Your boss sounds like a fucking moron. Sorry to hear about the beatings.

Can't blame him. I'm sure we've all wanted to get into Young Boys at some point.

Anecdotal but... .... one of the reasons why saying restrictions should be removed because ICU cases are not high misses the bigger picture.

Then we'll have no chance of doing anything, unless we get another set of easy fixtures. Not saying JWP is the answer but with the same central midfield we will get schooled by anyone decent. You can't have two cloggers in there and just hope Sterling, Kane or a full back pulls something out of the bag. Admittedly, if you rarely concede that can get you fairly far but if you want to excel you need people who can build play properly. It's not a criticism of anyone in particular, just that if we don't find a better class of ball player in central mid then we have no chance. Spain absolutely murdered Italy in midfield and would have killed us. I also doubt we would get anything against Belgium or France. So we're something like the 5th best team in Europe. If we had Spain's midfield or Italy's midfield, we'd be the best. Sadly, we don't.

Carry on having zero quality on the ball in midfield but getting piss easy draws? Need to build a team with more ability and less reliance on pace. Although we're on on right track.

Yep, we've barely touched the ball since the 20th minute. Too plodding in midfield and no one taking control of the play. That's the problem with two tacklers in there. Think we'll lose comfortably now. Southgate needs to do something. Get Bellingham or Grealish on, be braver on the ball, and push the defence up on Chiesa.

This BBC build up is fucking class. Come on England!

He's not "in the running", he's the only feasible choice unless someone does something ridiculous in the final.

If we are expected to pay all his wages - and they really are 65k a week- plus a few million in loan fees then it's quite an expensive loan for someone who will presumably be cover. A full back loan makes perfect sense but if its going to cost 6million quid then it could be better to go for a cheaper Cuco Martina / Jeremy Pied option and invest more in other areas. Improving at centre back, GK or attacking mid is more of a priority IMO.

Haha! I posted that with the express intention of seeing if you posted this. So stick that in your pipe.

He's a better passer than defender. Ironically, because his passing is so good, we were over reliant on him to start attacks. He's definitely worth selling for a fair price.

Agreed, except if we beat Denmark we will be playing, in the final, a team which is far better than anyone we have played so far, whether it’s Spain or Italy. Significantly better. We haven’t really seen how this team would do against a top team and I still worry a bit about our defence. But a one-off match, home advantage, Sterling in form and Kane getting his confidence back… we’ve got a decent chance for sure.

Congrats to Saints on following up their spring time signing of Theo with this excellent and timely first summer signing.

Let's be honest, though. Ukraine are shite. This reminds me a bit of the last World Cup where we played a load of shite teams. I expect us to beat Denmark too but I think the final will be difficult. But still, well done so far to everyone.

Cracking dive from Kane. Boo, cheating Italians etc.

Very harsh red. Barely a foul, really. If England had Spain’s midfield we would win the tournament at a canter. If they had Sterling and Kane, they probably would.

I’m inclined to agree with this. I think he’ll probably sign for another couple of years, but not until it’s clear one of those doesn’t want him. Which is fair enough and also good on SFC for being patient.

Ozzies letting the side down. They need to up their game or they'll get booted out of the vaccine, death-injection, population control gang. Someone really needs to remind them that this whole endeavour won't work unless they get people injected. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57661144 On a less idiotic note, I'm actually finding this increasingly psychologically difficult. The lockdown etc. obviously sucked but didn't have a huge impact on me personally for various reasons. It's very clear now though that it will be many years before we get even close to "normal". We will need boosters and we will have lots of variants for years to come and that will impact various things, not least travel. The impacts will be taken as validation by the dumb-ass groups that they were right all along and there's some plan afoot, and this whole situation will contribute to the societal malaise that political opportunists and online echo chambers are creating. That's assuming war doesn't break out with China. I'm feeling the outlook is bleak.

As usual the pundits are going well over the top. We were ok but nothing special. Sterling very good. That said, we avoid Belgium/Italy/Spain until the final so we won’t need to be brilliant to get there. Real chance to grind out a trophy.