Baird of the land

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.

Still not sure i get why VAR supposedly got it right. Not sure i get the logic that since he made contact with the player in his followthrough after getting the ball it is a penalty. If that is the case is every slide tackle now a foul because in 99% of them there is some degree of contact with player post making contact with the ball?

2 things struck me. Expanding the number of entrants from Asia for future world cup's looks crazy when you consider how awful one of best team's did against an average Russian side The Russian 4th goal. Was Dyzuba offside? All the replays i've seen annoyingly just focus on the finish. Given the change in the rule(in terms of how linesmen officiate marginal offsides) i was interested.

Disagree. Thought at the euros at least it meant there were virtually no dead rubbers.

Worry that VAR is going to be horrible. Already it seems in no way going to be limited to clear and obvious errors.

It's all going to the top 6 now that 8 turkeys have voted with them to increase their share of the overseas rights.

Hope he goes to Liverpool.

Big fan of Evans but in some ways he would be more of what we already have rather than a more physical Centre back.

Personally don't think his record wasn't even good before he came here. Only one season where he scored over 10, about 1 in 4 average over his career. With evidence that he's not a goalscorer i'd be looking for something else but he doesn't hold the ball up or even harry people with his pace like long. Get rid.

Well on paper at least a guy who plays regularly for title winning city is the obvious choice in a rather average England set up. Really don’t see vardy as the man as he has excelled through the middle as an out an out striker & unless Kane gets injured he’s not likely to start up top.

I personally don’t have an issue with Russia hosting it. They are a large country with a strong football base that hadn’t hosted it whereas Spain had relatively recently, as had England somewhat less recently who had also relatively recently hosted the euros. All of Portugal/Netherlands and Belgium had relatively recently hosted euros. Qatar, no history of ever even qualifying for wc, no stadiums, reports how dangerous the heat would be so that now they are going to rip up the football calendar to make it work. Yeah i’m Not going to be enthusiastic about that one.

We badly need is a strong aerial presence, who in an ideal world is also an organizer. If we were to get rid of any of them it would be yoshida for me. If we plan to continue with 3 at the back then you’d think we would need 5 rather than 4.

Glad he’s made their squad. He’s not the finished article but it’s clear he’s got some potential. I would never have described him as our best defender but I thought aerially he was strong which was an obvious weakness we had.

I’d move long on as well. If we are going to be giving a chance to someone, i’d Prefer it to be gallagher who hasn’t been given one despite a more promising beginning.

That's comical. It was a loopy hoick, certainly not anything particularly good. Now Tadic's impeccable control of the high ball and composure to finish was nice. Hope we get shot of Carrillo immediately.

Because he’s a very talented young player. And football money has gone mad