Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert wrote:

This tournament highlighted how few attributes Kane has. Useless, sluggish player if he's not surrounded by athletes and geniuses close-by.

Did you just use the plural "geniuses" when describing a Tottenham team? 😆

Klaus wrote:
Mirth wrote:

Basically, fuck Kane. A half fit Vardy would have been much better at scrapping something out

Yeah, I think the one mistake Southgate made in this tournament was to not use Vardy more too. You can understand why he didn't; everything leading up to the World Cup had been about Kane's prolificy as a striker and he did get the numbers early, be it that most of them were penalties or easy scraps against titans like Panama.

Vardy had the better form over the past half year or so though, he was in good shape going into the tournament, and I think his attributes would have been extremely useful against a team like Croatia. If football was less politics he would have started a couple games in the WC.

I don't understand why he kept bringing Rashford on instead of Vardy. Vardy when Rashford came on yesterday and Welbeck then in extra time and England might have made it. Rashford did fuck all when he came on.

Pepe LeFrits wrote:
@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

No but I can expect them to not needlessly bring in politics with remarks which clearly suggest a disdain for our country

He should have just called England a shit country instead.

Would have been better received.

Still no acknowledgement from anyone that it was a stupid thing to post. Good grief.

Kane didn’t look fully fit to me. Still probs win the golden boot mind

On an unrelated issue, why does England (and Scotland, Wales, N.I.) have their own teams, and it's the UK at the Olympics?

I'm just thinking, this team with Ramsey and Bale would do pretty well I'd think.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Kane didn’t look fully fit to me. Still probs win the golden boot mind

Fitness isn't the reason he runs like he's towing a caravan I'm afraid.

Qwiss! wrote:
Klaus wrote:

Yeah, I think the one mistake Southgate made in this tournament was to not use Vardy more too. You can understand why he didn't; everything leading up to the World Cup had been about Kane's prolificy as a striker and he did get the numbers early, be it that most of them were penalties or easy scraps against titans like Panama.

Vardy had the better form over the past half year or so though, he was in good shape going into the tournament, and I think his attributes would have been extremely useful against a team like Croatia. If football was less politics he would have started a couple games in the WC.

I don't understand why he kept bringing Rashford on instead of Vardy. Vardy when Rashford came on yesterday and Welbeck then in extra time and England might have made it. Rashford did fuck all when he came on.

Because Rashford plays for United and Southgate has no balls

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:
Pepe LeFrits wrote:

He should have just called England a shit country instead.

Would have been better received.

Still no acknowledgement from anyone that it was a stupid thing to post. Good grief.

It was a stupid thing to post.

Your conduct in this thread has been much worse however and I haven't seen any contrition coming from you.

Old Dules is just defending his country because they done went and got him excited in the football again and he's a bit sensitive today. No harm done.

Put some old songs on and remember how silly all this stuff is, old friend. I've just listened to a plethora of England songs from years gone by. Made me laugh my head off. And and Dec I'm on the ball, Sven Sven Sven, Come on England to the tune of Come on Eileen! And of course F̶o̶o̶t̶b̶a̶l̶l̶'̶s̶ Harry's coming home. Oh I do love that song. Cried my little eyes out at Euro 96. The useless bastards. 😆

It's nice not being invested any more, personally. I do genuinely see football as a load of silliness really these days, I'd like to think it's because I'm older and wiser, but who knows? Now if only I could stop being so crazy about Arsenal... 🙂

invisibleman18 wrote:
Clrnc wrote:

Spursy mentality really. "We challenged"

They got to the semi final. Did they not "challenge?" Should he have said they failed, came last and shouldn't have bothered qualifying to begin with?

Truly big footballing nations would be terribly disappointed to not be in the final at the very least, let alone with the run-in they got. I know England has underperformed for decades, but they are still a very big footballing nation that should have expectations to win trophies and not just get past group stages to be success IMO. Maybe its because it's been a long long time since England went into a semi, but many journalist and players trying to spin this as a good success and proud of their performances despite the fact that the squad has real quality but the players bottled it against a tired Croatia team is weird. England played so well in the first 30 minutes, it should have been easy pickings for them in the 2nd half with their pace up front on the counter but they chose to sit back and got punished for it.

I think with better big game mentality this squad would be good enough to push France to the very end in the final.

Football has nothing to do with it Tricky. Honest to god I don’t really get affected by it. Sadly same goes for Arsenal as ultimately it’s just a game. What I don’t like is folk using it as an opportunity to have a pop at countries, england or any other for that matter.

Yeah and Pepe I couldn’t give a monkeys if I called gurgen a pr*ck. I’d do that in real life given the context

Clrnc I’d say the majority of folk here are truly disappointed at not being in the final but at the same time we are proud that the team gave their all and entertained us over the last month.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Old Dules is just defending his country because they done went and got him excited in the football again and he's a bit sensitive today. No harm done.

I'm sure there isn't any harm done, Gurgen's a big boy. And while I appreciate your attempts (and of others) to defuse the tension, he isn't just defending his country; he's being an asshole. You can't see the full post history as some are deleted but Dula's response to Gurgen's post was to make four separate posts insulting him personally. Then he goes on and on looking for others to condemn Gurgen for disrespecting his country... such sanctimony might come across as genuine if he wasn't habitually disrespectful of many other countries.

Fact is what he posted was disrespectful and yet it’s been brushed over. Keep doing that and all that kind of crap becomes accepted

And what he posted wasn't even correct given Brexit was about Europe. Had a couple of people make the same joke at me at work yesterday too.

There's been some genuinely outrageous stuff posted on this place over the last 8 years, you've chosen a fairly trivial one to lash out over Dules 😆

To be fair I barely read others post unless it’s about transfers 😆

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

No he’s not.

He's a proper cheat. Disgusting player. 

He embellishes a bit and exaggerates contact from time to time. But not as bad as Neymar, and he can probably eliminate that silliness from his game over time, as he matures.

But those are strong words. I don’t think he’s a cheat, nor a disgusting player.

Nothing he has done is as bad as Henry’s handball against Ireland for instance...

y va marquer wrote:

Not sure Southgate's handbag matches his outfit.

Realistically in terms of international football, much like Arsenal, England aren't in that top bracket of teams. For me we are much more like a Sweden decent enough but no real threat to win the thing. Average progression likely around the quarter finals so this campaign certainly ranks on the successful side for England. Albeit similar to Arsenal's missed opportunity when Leicester won the title, you can make more of a positive from it but the reality is the big boys aren't normally gonna go missing and teams like England need to maximise those moments.

Considering population and football interest, England should absolutely be in that top bracket.

Gad you guys are harsh. I don't think England expected to get anywhere near this far. Granted they got damned lucky with a piss easy group and easy knockout matchups, but most fans had been pessimistic thus far.
Semis was undreamt of for sure. Don't read too much into the "it's coming home" chants, half of which are ironic and the other half just a good ol-fashioned geeing up for the fans.

banduan wrote:

Gad you guys are harsh. I don't think England expected to get anywhere near this far. Granted they got damned lucky with a piss easy group and easy knockout matchups, but most fans had been pessimistic thus far.
Semis was undreamt of for sure. Don't read too much into the "it's coming home" chants, half of which are ironic and the other half just a good ol-fashioned geeing up for the fans.

That's exactly it. I don't think anyone actually believed we would win it. Just keeping up and making the most out of the positive vibe that the games had been giving us. We started to dream even though I think everyone knew it would most likely end in heartbreak eventually.

Folks need to be able to separate the positive vibes and enthusiasm from looking at the performance and quality in the cold hard light of day. Looking at the latter with a critical eye does not mean you're being critical of the former.

banduan wrote:

Gad you guys are harsh. I don't think England expected to get anywhere near this far. Granted they got damned lucky with a piss easy group and easy knockout matchups, but most fans had been pessimistic thus far.
Semis was undreamt of for sure. Don't read too much into the "it's coming home" chants, half of which are ironic and the other half just a good ol-fashioned geeing up for the fans.

If you're going by odds from betting sides they lost the one game they were not favorites, and one of the games where they were favorites. So the opposition considered  theyve done slightly worse than expected. When you don't take the opposition into consideration they've obviously done better though.

Ricky1985 wrote:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44808192

I think that's a fair and balanced article by the BBC.

fair enough, but they're not mentioning the fact that they called on Wilshere to be dropped, when England badly needed creativity. Lo and behold, England had problems creating.

Adrian Durham on talksports blaming Spurs' lack of winning mentality for England going out against Croatia  😆 😆 😆

Goooooood 🙂

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Considering population and football interest, England should absolutely be in that top bracket.

If only it were so simple but like Arsenal despite being seemingly in a good position to do so we are unable to compete. Similarly just as smaller countries are able to over perform despite the apparent restrictions  there are other factors in play that impact the performance of teams.

England would have absolutely done better with Shelvey in the centre given how much long balls they resorted to and Henderson putting world class pivot performances like this.

Not sure why Southgate didn't use Loftus Cheek more considering he was impressive whenever he played, while Alli is disappointing.

Henderson is shocking.

Henderson is a bit of a joke of a footballer, but it looks like at least half of the situations in that clip are Kane's fault. The midfielders were clearly instructed to play the early long ball. Kane was just too lazy to start his runs before the pass had been played. Vardy would probably have made something out of a couple of those overhit balls.

Tactics wrote:

Adrian Durham on talksports blaming Spurs' lack of winning mentality for England going out against Croatia  😆 😆 😆

Goooooood 🙂

😆

Good to see him putting his trolling to good use for once.