ScepticalStan

You feeling like a bit of a wally yet?

How much have you bet on leave then at 3/1? Not a single penny I suspect.

Er. They haven't stuck it to Ronaldo in any sense of the phrase. Portugal now play Croatia and then Switzerland or Poland instead of England, France and then Germany Italy or Spain.

Sounds about right

PMSL can't wait for us to get well and truly teabagged in the 1/4 finals against a vaguely competent team and laugh my tits off at you. English football is in the stone age and has been for a while now. ******** to England. Come on you Saints.

With Albania in 3rd with 3 points and a -2 GD all we need now is another team to finish 3rd with a similar record and the bar is set nice and low for anyone who wants to qualify as one of the 'four best thirds'. It is quite conceivable that in these final group games we'll be faced with teams who are losing who simply play to avoid conceding one more. If, say, England beat Slovakia 2-0 and Wales avoid defeat against Russia then it'll be Slovakia who finish 3rd on 3 points with a -2 GD as well - meaning that Northern Ireland simply need to avoid defeat by more than two goals to guarantee qualification. The Germans might even be OK with this as the runner-up from their group only faces the runner-up from Group A (the mighty Switzerland) so it really gives them no incentive to try and win the group. The whole format has been a shambles.

The Cox murderer wasn't really a terrorist though was he? If there was a white supremacist paramilitary organisation which had taken control of an area the size of Great Britain and recruited thousands of people to it's cause that he had pledged allegiance to prior to murdering this woman, then yeah. But there isn't and he hadn't. In fact, he had a history of mental illness confirmed. He literally was a lone crackpot. No-one had any qualms with calling the IRA terrorists or indeed Breivik or McVeigh. Are we seriously supposed to start calling white murderers 'terrorists' even when they're not just to even up the score?

Just let him know we'll see him next season. There'll be enough of a bidding war to keep the price high.

Croatia beating the Czechs and a Spain win tonight and the maximum points a team from Group D will finish 3rd with is 3 points. If Romania can't beat Albania on Sunday then the rest of the groups will know that 4 points and a 3rd place finish will mathematically seal progress. Loads of teams will play for draws and some will even just need to avoid defeat by a certain number of goals in their final group games. Stupid format that's reduced the group stage to a complete and utter bore.

Definitely not just you. I mean bloody hell we've had no more than three goals in any match and no team has scored more than two in any one match. As an anomaly that's way out there (Got a feeling that could maybe be a little different tonight with Spain against Turkey but I could easily be completely wrong). UEFA's stupid 24-team everyone's-a-winner/heaven-forbid-anyone-half-decent-get's-knocked-out-in-the-group-stage format has been the reason. 1) Teams know that there's a 66% chance you'll go through the group if you finish third - meaning that most are happy to play out a draw. Yes, granted, there have been late goals but the set-up from everyone has been cautious. 2) The fact that there are tonnes of third-placers in there completely ballses up the prospective 'tournament tree' from the Round-of-16 onwards. With a symmetrical 32-team or 16-team tournament the good teams are incentivised to top their group and secure an easier route to the final. Now that there are bunch of third-placers to fit in there, everything's much more random. Try it. Do a predictor. Spain have a particularly easy route to the final if they win their group, but the winners of Group E (probably Italy) will have a much tougher route to the final than the team finishing second (probably Belgium). The exact same thing happened with 'Golden Goal'. Another stupid rule that everyone could see was going to have precisely the opposite effect to the one desired.

You can add me to the pessimistic Brexiter list! Odds on remain shortening slightly to 4/9.

Where did you hear these rumours? man down the pub who read it in the Daily Mail (Incidentally I'm voting to leave, so if you do happen to wipe the smirk off my face with an absolutely cast-iron source that gives these 'rumours' any credibility then I'd be delighted) My money's still on remain.

Bit more of a scattered fixture list than we've had for the past few seasons. Tougher to go on a proper run of wins but obviously also easier to avoid careering down the table without an easy game in sight for a month. Other than that; not much to say. Everyone plays everyone twice at the end of the day.

Guys. It's one match. Gash as Lukaku was tonight please close this tragedy of a thread.

Odds on remain have drifted from being an absolute lock at 1/5, 1/6 - ish two or three weeks ago, to as much as 4/9. You won't even triple your money if you bet on Brexit and you're right as that's now 7/4.

Genuinely feel bad for him because he never failed to give 100% in the (very) small cameos where he did make an appearance. He actually forced a very good save out of Guzan when we were 0-1 down at home to Villa which, had it gone in, maybe would have changed things. Poor lad just had the most dainty, high centre-of-gravity running style and I've never seen a player be shouldered off the ball just so, so easily by literally any opponent. Feel bad for the guy and hope he hasn't damaged his career at all. But having said that, there's a difference between being nice and lol...basically just lying... LMFAO. No. No he didn't.

That adds up to 4.2 million houses for 0.3 million immigrants per year.

And with an absolute tonne of money as well. Its not exactly a secret how much Bournemouth have spent on players but it nevertheless does fly under the radar. Oh - and one point I'd also make - Bournemouth were odds against to get relegated even at the start of the season. They simply weren't the miniscule minnows that one might picture them as. They've spent tonnes over the past couple of years and Howe has done no more than say, Adkins did/would have done in getting them up/keeping them up. Losing Koeman was disappointing but replacing him with Eddie Howe would almost be worse. Pellegrini would be a good statement of intent but a lot depends on his motivation & given his age it might not be the best of moves. AVB would be my choice - something to prove and actually, did OK-ish with Spurs despite the blame that came his way. I kinda like the fact that he doesn't get on with the media too - could help foster the kind of everyones-against-us backs-to-the-wall mentality that I think we've always done well with. We are a small club, but we're the kind of small club that can beat anyone. We can embarrass Liverpool, cause Mourinho & Chelsea to go into breakdown, cost Arsenal the title, cost Spurs their top-2 finish. A last-minute equaliser to draw at Old Trafford is the worst result we've got there in three seasons. We're starting to become universally disliked by almost all of the big clubs for one very simple reason; whilst we're a small club that they constantly feel they should take 6 points from, not one of them can ever count on beating or even sneaking a point against Southampton. We've inflicted battle scars on all of them. Big time.

Regardless of whether or not UKIP are unelectable they've still crippled the Labour vote in the northern heartlands - so much so that I don't expect we'll ever see a Labour government (in their current guise) ever again, to be blunt. Slowly, painfully slowly, the left are coming to terms with the fact that globalisation, the offshoring of low-level jobs and mass immigration simply don't benefit the working class. At all. And there's no longer any way than they can con them into believing otherwise with phrases like 'diversity'/'tolerance'/'open society' etc. which carry about as much meaningful content for a plumber who's wages have been undercut as 'doubleplusgood'. This is why you've got countries like Switzerland considering policies as extreme as guaranteed/universal income etc.

Its amazing the amount of 'know your place' rhetoric from Everton fans who honestly think they'll finish above City, United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal next season. The victim complex & hypocrisy of that entire city is nothing short of hilarious.

This passive-aggressive stuff from both sides is an absolute bore. Same deal as when Pochettino left. Thanks for your time, best of luck in the future and we'll move on and improve. No different to when anyone leaves any other workplace.

Well, quite. But they have a clear and easy excuse - our being in the EU prevents us from controlling immigration and whilst we understand the public's concerns, we believe that the economic security of the country rests on us remaining a leader within the EU aaaand blablabla that's the end of that. If we're outside the EU the ruling government will have to make a clear justification for it's choice to bring in X many people per year whenever its held to account in a general election. That's not to say that immigration will come down, but they will have to face the question honestly without the easy excuse of our being in the EU.

Neville would perhaps give us access to United's academy youngsters on loan; particularly given Mourinho won't ever want to play them. I really like Klinsmann so I'd be happy if he came here, but I'm not entirely convinced he'd be particularly great for us. Got a lot out of an average German side in 2006 though and his USA team looked good at the World Cup.

Yeah I'd agree; which is why I'm in favour of leaving the EU and bringing net migration down. What I don't want to see is the migrants who miss out being the useful ones who contribute to society - who ironically are the EU migrants. The important thing about migration in terms of leaving the EU is it'll remove the excuse that we can't actually control it when people request it to be lowered. Any government presiding over a net immigration number of 300k+ is going to have to sit there with a straight face and explain why they've made the choice to allow that many migrants in - rather than simply going "Welp...'fraid we're in the EU innit".

What's the problem if the immigrants are making a net contribution to the society? EU migrants put in way more than their fair share. Its migration from outside the EU that costs us when its Ali Al-Jabber bringing over his fourth wife and her cousins etc. Who's costing the country more; Jacek the plumber, or these two who were laughably bumped to the front of the queue for a council flat in Tooting and offered a bilingual 'minder' to help them with things like shopping? (though they turned it down to continue to live on their bench). http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/12898609.Homeless_Somali_family_return_to_another_bench_in_Tooting/