World Cup Group D

But yo didnt even watch the game so how do you know?

"Running through walls" is just tabloid talk and ryman league manager drivel

Welbeck "runs through walls". more than most players in the tournament and hes what exactly?

I would rather someone could thread a pass rather than charge around like a headless chicken

"Toughest league"? That's very debatable.
 
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Clive very predictable from you but that is exactly the kind of thinking that wont get English football anywhere. The football gods conspired against us and all that jazz. English football is simply not set up anymore to be successful at the highest level because it is not the no.1 priority

EC The PL might be the toughest league in Europe (debatable as you'd have to frame the term toughest) but it lives and breathes on the merits of foreign players and managers.
 
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clivex said:
But yo didnt even watch the game so how do you know?

"Running through walls" is just tabloid talk and ryman league manager drivel

I would rather someone could thread a pass rather than charge around like a headless chicken
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i wasn't talking about one game Clive...i'm talking about game after game...were they different against Uruguay then?...oh no they weren't..or they wouldn't be getting the same post match comments as they usually get

htf is "running through walls" tabloid talk?...what a stupid comment..its got nothing to do with newspapers or media..yer obsessed with saying that stuff

lets put it another way...that won't be declared left wing, right wing, daily mail by you...they don't give a flying f**k when they play for England...its just a hobby..a few drinks with mates from other teams afterwards.

Its not just this team..its many others over 40 years...the number of times i've read your..well they are young players bedding in..type of comment over my lifetime...its just an excuse
 
clivex said:
But yo didnt even watch the game so how do you know?

"Running through walls" is just tabloid talk and ryman league manager drivel

I would rather someone could thread a pass rather than charge around like a headless chicken

"Toughest league"? That's very debatable.
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I do agree with running thru walls will only get you so far but you do sense much more urgency in the play of teams like Costa Rica and Chile although they can surely pass the ball around at a very high level as well. In the end English football just lacks in many departments and maybe so do some of the English fans because anybody that thinks Gerrard had a good game yesterday has a very low expectation of what they want to see from their players in a game.
 
brendanr said:
Clive very predictable from you but that is exactly the kind of thinking that wont get English football anywhere. The football gods conspired against us and all that jazz. English football is simply not set up anymore to be successful at the highest level because it is not the no.1 priority

EC The PL might be the toughest league in Europe (debatable as you'd have to frame the term toughest) but it lives and breathes on the merits of foreign players and managers.
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Try actually answering what I said rather than attributing an opinion to me which I did not

Where did I say anything about the "footballing gods".
 
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brendanr said:
EC The PL might be the toughest league in Europe (debatable as you'd have to frame the term toughest) but it lives and breathes on the merits of foreign players and managers.
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i agree it does...but by playing alongside such good players has to be a good thing...and in fact any English player who does keep his place in a Premiership side must be very good to keep a foreign player out of that postion

so it can't really be skill level..Costa Rica aren't as skilled as us..they won both games...many other less skillfull sides have done well in the past..team spirit, skill and a will to win is what makes that happen

in the 60's we had many teams that had welsh, scots and Irish players in Div 1 [premiership]...so its not like we had 11 English players making up every side...we were at that time good enough to beat anybody
 
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clivex said:
Try actually answering what I said rather than attributing an opinion to me which I did not

Where did I say anything about the "footballing gods".
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I attributed your quote " 96 was a genuinely good side and would almost certainly ave won that final if the penalties had gone in" as a football gods type moment. Maybe I should have just said that" if" and "would have" are in sports mostly irrelevant because a) it wasn't and b) we don't even know if it would have been. The fact remains that for all its bluster England have in close to 90 years one major football title and that was fifty years ago. And for a good chunk of those 50 years have looked pretty mediocre, much more so than their perceived reputation.
 
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EC1 said:
i agree it does...but by playing alongside such good players has to be a good thing...and in fact any English player who does keep his place in a Premiership side must be very good to keep a foreign player out of that postion

so it can't really be skill level..Costa Rica aren't as skilled as us..they won both games...many other less skillfull sides have done well in the past..team spirit, skill and a will to win is what makes that happen

in the 60's we had many teams that had welsh, scots and Irish players in Div 1 [premiership]...so its not like we had 11 English players making up every side...we were at that time good enough to beat anybody
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You would think so about the English player keeping out the foreign player but the field of teams in the middle and bottom of the PL are just not that good. As for the 60's remember also that the great Brazil team of 1970 did not have one player that played in Europe neither did any other South American country. Even in Europe it was rare for top quality players to play outside of their own country's leagues. Completely different landscape today.
 
I'll give you that was a good team (my outlier) but we'll never know. What Euro was it when Denmark backed in because a team got rousted for some sort of impropriety and then they went on and won the whole thing. You just never know except of course that England won't be winning the WC this year.

Just teasing. :)
 
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brendanr said:
You would think so about the English player keeping out the foreign player but the field of teams in the middle and bottom of the PL are just not that good. As for the 60's remember also that the great Brazil team of 1970 did not have one player that played in Europe neither did any other South American country. Even in Europe it was rare for top quality players to play outside of their own country's leagues. Completely different landscape today.
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obviously in those days there were no foreign players..but my point was that there are probably a similar number of top English players available now as there was then..as there were more Irish Welsh & Scottish players filling the spots that foreign fill now.

i assume that people do not believe that our players are not good enough ability wise

there has to be a reason why we can't win owt..or even get close would be nice...is it the case our players are not good enough?...i can't see it tbh

one thing that does worry me re ability though...is that many on here...so i assume many people in general think Wayne Rooney is a world class footballer...if that is the case then maybe we aren't good enough because to me he is very average...yet is on a quarter mil a week...maybe the moneys the problem is it?

i think there is bit of everything happening..maybe the media have bulled up people like Rooney so that even he thinks he's world class so just strolls through games

when he was younger i thought he was one of the best English players i'd seen...i haven't had the thought for many years
 
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96 team was more like it...so what is so different now?...there were plenty of foreign players then keeping English players out of the premiership...so it can't be that
 
The current England side is transitional - and that fact wouldn't change if they'd won both games 6-0.

The coverage this year, insofar as expectations are concerned, has been refreshingly level-headed....bordering on logical, I'd say (the occassional, hopelessly-optimistic eejit apart). Why therefore the apparent shock when they get papped-out early-doors?

For me, there were two fundamental problems with the England side. Firstly, they looked a yard slower than their opponents in almost every respect. Whether this lethargy was due to laziness/lack of grit, or the demands of a "tough league", is moot. As the wise davidjohnson once said - "we deal in effect - cause is largely immaterial". Either way, they looked somnambulent.

Secondly, they looked like they were playing in a system they'd been shown two minutes before kick-off. The midfield was absent in both matches (referred to earlier in the thread as a 4-2-0-4 formation), and they looked like they didn't even have a rudimentary grasp of how they needed to shape themselves. This much I can accept, given the limited opportunities this squad have had to play together.

The FAs reaction is the right one, imo. Hodgson is a much better manager than he is given credit for, and I think he will put together a very capable side in the medium-term, once some of the English Galacticos start to self-exclude on the back of the tournament.
 
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Ec. There were a group of players who blended well under a manager they loved. And we had a genius in midfield. A real genius. And I rarely use that word

Grass. That's right but a yard slower because they were less familiar with each other and method of play. Not through effort. It just takes the split econd more to make that pass. Think sherimgham and shearer in 96 and see the difference an understanding makes

I totally agree with rest and certainly have a lot of time for woy
 
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i personally had no expectations Grass...i couldn't even see them qualifying...hence my only two bets of the World Cup so far

I have noticed that younger people over the last few years have actually had quarter final expectations rather than actually winning it...so i do believe people are, over the decades, being conditioned to expect very little

in another 10 years it might be...i think they might get out of the group stage this time...as expectation levels slip further
 
EC1 said:
96 team was more like it...so what is so different now?...there were plenty of foreign players then keeping English players out of the premiership...so it can't be that
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I'd be curious to see what the % is of foreign players vs. indigenous ones in the top 4-5 teams today compared to 1996. My gut tells me it is much higher today simply because The PL thanks to Murdoch and lately BT shells out more money than any other league on the planet. You will simply attract more high class foreign players than before.
 
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