sadoldgit

Only if the current holder of the FIFA Peace Prize gets involved. Interesting point though. I thought the point of booking players for taking their shirt off when scoring was down to the sponsors wanting their names to be seen on pictures of the goal scorer. There are no sponsors names on shirts in the WC.

Which have actually become coaching breaks with a bit of hydration thrown in.

The Belgium team had a meeting beforehand and were fired up by the red card situation. Sounds like Trump’s intervention backfired bigly which is just as well as you can just imagine the grief if Balogun had scored the winner. Trump hates losers, perhaps Balogun and Pochettino will be receiving visits from ICE agents soon!

When we bought him he did get in that team.

If they want to bring along an older player to add experience in the dressing room, just add one of them to the coaching staff. Job done.

It’s amazing isn’t it? Little Southampton FC cheat in the EFL and get the book thrown at them. The President of the US cheats for his national team in front of the whole world and FIFA bend over backwards to help him.

Second most successful manager is a pretty low bar to be fair. Apart from Ramsey every other manager has failed to deliver. No one is saying that Southgate was a poor manager. The point is, with what he had at his disposal we could have done better if he had not been so cautious. Losing is not the issue. It is losing when you have the potential to win that is so frustrating. England failed to qualify under Ramsey against Poland, but anyone watching that game will know that England gave everything in that match and left everything on the pitch. I wish I could say the same about the two finals and the semi under Southgate.

Not sure that anyone thinks that he is a genius so far. We have looked below par in the competition up to now but hopefully that gutsy display last night has given the squad what it needed to build the fighting team spirit that has been lacking. You can’t rely on a couple of players digging you out every game. That win last night forged England into a fighting unit. Norway will be tough. Like us they have a few quality players along with some decent but not great players at this level. I would have preferred to be playing Brazil, but hey ho. Bring it on!

He loved sport and he understands it really well, apart from knowing what a red card in “soccer” means apparently. This sums up Trump and his presidency perfectly. He decides what is right and wrong even if he hasn’t got a clue what is going on. What Donald wants, Donald gets.

Southgate was risk averse. Instead of “who dares wins” his motto was “who plays safe might not lose.” Yep, fair play to him for getting that far in competitions, but it is all about winning and I don’t know of another country who would give a top honour to a serial runner up. Can you image how Trump would have treated him?

Michael Stipe of REM fame loved this phrase. He was initially told that it meant that you like the smell of your own farts. Hopefully someone put him right. I can confirm that it means being blown up by your own bomb (used to blow in doors or walls in medieval times).

So did Archer. I think Fellows was disappointing last season. If you think he wasn’t, fair enough but his finishing was dreadful and he has shown that he can score previously.* Eckhert has shown that he can coach but he is not the Messiah. Buying players in the hope that your coaching team can turn them into something else is not a wise strategy (unless you have bottomless resources) as we have seen to our cost before. We had a good squad that was underperforming. Eckhert got us playing as a team, which Still failed miserably at, but not every player improved under him and his coaching team, which is my point. To point out the obvious, you can’t just assume that because he has got the best out of some, it will work for all. If that is the case and he can turn any player around, let’s save some money and bring back Downs and BBD. *9 goals for WBA

Considering that several EPL clubs are supposed to be interested in him (Everton, Newcastle, Fulham) along with some Serie A clubs I’m not sure why we are discussing the likelihood of him coming here on loan anyway. The idea that Eckert can turn every cow’s ear into a silk purse needs to be put to bed too. Fellows had a disappointing season. Robinson went backwards after a promising start and if DD stays I doubt very much if Ekhert will turn him around.