JackFrost

Not for me, Maradona had to learn on the job and after the initial fiasco (including a 6-1 loss against the might of Bolivia) he is doing well for Argentina because he knows exactly how they should play, he practically dragged the Argies to world cup glory in '86 all by himself. Even now there are still questions defensively over them. The other aspect is the Argies have some of the world's best attacking, creative players within their squad whereas we have nothing near that class. Beckham just wouldn't cut it, and if he was appointed manager he'd be another yes man like McClaren was.

Asian teams are well organised defensively but don't score enough goals. African teams score enough goals but aren't good enough defensively. Plus regular watchers of the African Cup of Nations on here will know all about the dreadful standard of goalkeeping in Africa as a whole This is one of my personal favourites from this year's tournament http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ_RyNBrsv0&feature=related

The root of the problem is arrogance and money. The players are overpaid and only care about one thing, their bank balance. They are ruled by money. This causes arrogance. They are hyped up by the media before it all begins and subsequently think they have a god given right to beat any country who they've never heard of/can't automatically point to on a world atlas with little effort, just because they earn £100,000 a week. What they and the English media as a whole don't realise is the top South American/Asian/African teams and top European teams (and I don't include France & England in that bracket) have improved their game massively in the last 10 years and us and France have gone backwards. 11 world class players don't necessarily mean a good team and that's if we had 11 world class players which we don't. Man for man we have more talent overall than a lot of teams we face but they make up for it through passion and hard work and better technical ability. As for teams like Spain, Argentina, Brazil, the gap between them and us is a yawning chasm of class. I thought us not qualifying for Euro 2008 was a significant wake up call but obviously it wasn't significant enough.

1) Rooney is overrated, a top player and one of England's best strikers - yes. World class - no. Crouch has been our most potent goalscoring threat for a couple of years now. 2) Currently Rooney is nowhere near match fit

1-1 and Harry Kewell sent off for a deliberate handball on his own goal line

Call me cynical but I think whether an England player starts depends more on how many replica shirts they'll sell and not how well they perform. Lampard is the epitome of it.

This is part of the problem, neither of them will be. Can anyone name one England game in the last 5 years when either Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Rio haven't started when fit regardless of how badly they've played?

Until we start dropping the underperforming prima donnas the national team will go nowhere. Problem is that won't happen because not enough replica shirts will sell. The prima donnas are disinterested, and the fringe players who play with some heart aren't good enough

Disagree they should have got Stuart Pearce on. He'd have given them a rocket just where they needed it.

I think in the last 10 years as a whole we have gone backwards. The Hispanic countries have improved their games through keeping possession, us and France have gone downhill and the top teams from Africa/Asia (Egypt, Ghana, Algeria, South Korea, Japan) have made massive improvements and on their day are better than us. Most of the England players know they will start every game regardless of form, they get paid too much and the only time they give a damn is when they've just been knocked out of the tournament

Lampard, Lennon, Rooney non existent. Heskey is woeful, he is so clumsy. Gerrard - poor Our defensive players like Carragher, Barry etc. hae done a good job, but that's just because we have very little creativity, because we give the ball away every few passes. Still expecting a 1-0 or a 2-0 win. Crouch will come on in the 65th min and grab at least one, then Gerrard will score in the 90th minute. As for having a chance of winning the tournament we just aren't good enough, we're nowhere near good enough technically, the players' hearts aren't in it and we fail to string more than 5 or 6 passes together at any one time. It's looking like we'll go out in the second round to the Germans

Difference is, the taxman can do it legally

and from HMRC's point of view it's surely a blueprint for other clubs to try. I would be very surprised if HMRC didn't appeal this, if they don't then they've effectively let Pompey shown all the clubs how to live beyond your means with very little repercussions. This may be far fetched but you could have Championship teams buying quality players they can never afford, getting automatic promotion then when the **** hits the fan take the 10 point penalty and end up at worse mid table but possibly still in with a shout of going up

I'd always recommend a Micra. you can get a decent 1 litre Micra for less than a grand and the only features on them are a radio and the air inside the car you breathe. Very basic and very cheap to maintain and insure and very little if anything will go wrong with them. Fairly poky up til you get around 35 mph and then it's about half a minute to 60 While my wife only does 4 or 5 thousand miles a year in very short trips in her Micra she can go over a month before having to fill the tank up (which only costs her 35 quid). She's had it for 2 years and the only time it didn't start was when the original battery went flat (and even just before that it started every time in the winter with a weak battery)

Serbia's two best players were Vidic and the referee

This is one of the worst refereeing performances I have seen in years. He is clueless. Some people think the refs from the African/Asian confederations are bad but this guy is Spanish and the worst of the lot 6 yellow cards and 1 red in 45 mins.

so the 15th of July is the date which HMRC must appeal by?

Costa Rica's army got disbanded in 1949 although they still have a small paramilitary force. In fact there are more armyless countries than you might think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces

Had a quick look at North Korea's qualification matches for the World Cup. They conceded just 7 goals in 16 games. 1st round they conceded 2 goals in 2 games against Mongolia. 2nd round they got a bye 3rd round they didn't concede at all in 6 games, in a group containing South Korea, Jordan and Turkmenistan Final round they conceded 5 goals in 8 games, in a group consisting of South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and United Arab Emirates Maybe Brazil got tips off the Mongolian football team

Faster? I haven't noticed any difference in speed. Cleaner? A salesman's word which usually means absolutely nothing. In this case, considering there's a bug report page on the forum suggestions section I would beg to differ. Easier on the eye? Couldn't disagree with you more. It all looks messy to me and (probably my age) but I find the forum generally more difficult to use. I know the colour scheme is Saints related but it does look like a 1970s tabloid newspaper. More Direct? Agree with you on that one Better Options? Explain More feature rich? TBH all I do is put forward my opinions (obviously) Simpler to use? Disagree, I still can't work out smileys and half of the quick type-in shortcuts don't work. I like the menus at the top of the page but aesthetically it's a big regression on the previous design

It's ever so slightly quieter if you put BBC Radio 5 live commentary on.

I agree with you on the first goal, I think that was a stroke of improvisational genius from Maicon as he sensed Guk wasn't covering his near post tightly enough. As for their second it was a world class pass, the direction and speed were 100% perfect. If it had been 99% perfect it would have been cleared. From Robinho's point of view if the ball had been ever so slightly to the left the keeper would have come out and gathered it, and if it had been ever so slightly to the right the defender would have dealt with it. It was just positioned and weighted so perfectly that it made the keeper think twice about coming out for it, but was just out of reach for the defender

The other aspect was their discipline. I think in the first half they only gave 1 free kick away? They gave away a few more in the second half as they tired but some of them were poor decisions by the ref. I liked that parody of North Korean propaanda they showed last night http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8742773.stm

Anyone else see those fans supporting North Korea (wonder if they were the rumoured Chinese actors) doing that synchronised clapping before the game, complete with conductor?

What? Andrew Andronikou has his own app now?