Baird of the land

As things stand the defence worries me more, less from a view that i think they are all bad players but more from a it seems like we are badly in need of getting to a settled set of starting centre backs who are in tune with eachother. That coupled with rumours of Targett leaving, meaning left back cover would be weaker & he's the one player to look ok at cover right back too. Striking, Austin looks our settled first choice. Good to see Gabbi back & more involved. Also think Gallagher has tonnes of potential if we actually have the bravery to give him opportunities. My one qualm is the rumours surrounding us selling him when it seems obvious to me that if we want to lose an attacker it plainly should be long. Can't Elyounessi play up there too?

Don't think it should be complete expected starting xi. Hoping we give the likes of sims/Gallagher starts in this one to see if they can make a case for a more prominent role.

Still keeping my fingers crossed rumours of us shipping Gallagher are false & he;ll actually be given an opportunity by us this season.

Disappointed Hughes doesn't seem to rate Hesketh. Hope he can get a move somewhere where he will be given an opportunity rather than waste the year making up numbers for the u23's.

Is hesketh injured again or just on his way out? Our lineup looked a mess generally. I’ll judge team on later friendlies.

Frustrating player. There were a couple of moments of absurd skill but just didn't work out. Hopefully he does well there and we actually end up getting some kind of fee for him.

If we aren't willing to give Gallagher a game then we should sell him.

Bertrand has had the same level of cover since he’s been here, when he developed into an England international. If we believe he is complacent sell him(i don’t Believe he is) and buy a new first choice one. If they are under threat it’s likely we’ll have a hole elsewhere in the squad.

He may not be perfect but he’s a good highly paid international first choice right back. We’ve enough unhappy players we need to loan out without creating another one because there isn’t a chance in a million of Cedric accepting being our reserve right back. If we sell him try and buy a better replacement sure but can’t see how a club our size can or should maintain a bloated squad of players, let alone the potential detrimental effect on the quality of first team signings from having to maintain such a squad.

We didn’t sign Cedric as backup to clyne but as his replacement. We aren’t going to sign a better right back and have the first choice Portugal right back as an unhappy reserve.

Prefer to have Stephens/Valery as backup rather than sign another journeyman to bloat the squad.

Thought first half was pretty dire by both sides. England had 2 shots on target all game & one of those was a penalty.

Bizarre game. Colombia not bothering to do anything but be filthy for 70 odd minutes. When they did bother to have a go they caused England all sorts of problems. Glad England got through but they played extremely poorly, with exception of period during 2nd period of extra time Have to play a million times better to beat a good Sweden side. You’d think they wouldn’t be as stupid as Colombia.

They were never going to score from lumping it in the box from a corner, given the nature of the 2 teams.

Utter stupidity from Japan. Why are they even trying to swing a high ball into the box from a corner, let alone in the last minute of injury time. Play it short! Shame I was looking forward to extra time.

Russia have played positively in previous games. I’ll happily cheer a Russian defeat if they play like that against a team that attempts to play positively. Complaining about the Russian style when the Spanish style was to pass the ball slow in the hope of exhausting the Russians. Rodrigo once ran at them and almost scored.

Thank goodness Spain are out. Slow possession football with no end product gets its deserved response. De gea poor World Cup continues in the shoot out.

Japan would have been the easiest last 16 tie. Winning the group, getting to quarters even to then lose to Brazil would have been seen as qualified success. They are now on the higher risk, higher reward path. think Colombia will cause England problems but if they get past they have a similar level of qtr final.

Seems a deal that likely suits everybody. We get some money while he’s still got some resale value for a very skillful if inconsistent player who’s probably looking for a new challenge.

Relieved it isn’t going to be Nigeria France as that would have been turgid.

mascherano looks well past his best. Argentina deserved the win as Nigeria didn’t really offer enough imo.

That should have been a red card imo. Ronaldo got a free pass because of his fame. Yellow card was such bottling. It’s either a red or nothing. On the whole var is a mess, so much murky grey area to drive a truck through. Both penalties were down to interpretation. There have been similar handball penalties given this tournament and not overturned by var. Should they have been reviewed, probably not but the whole system is set up so that it’s a var team using imperfect human judgement to decide whether another human beings judgement was sufficiently dodgy to have incident reviewed once again by the imperfect human being on the pitch. Coupled with fact it massively disrupts the game means it should be ditched.

sounds like you are talking about Redmond.

As a relative neutral thought that was much better than any tournament performance in recent times by England. Premier league Kane turning up in an England shirt.

don't think he had total control. Think aussie puts the ball into Griezmann's foot hence why the ball flies so far in front of him, so that he wasn't likely to ball before goalkeeper.