sixx

This probably means that Dummett will be regarded as a left back from here now on. I'm not a big fan of that.

I actually decided to go through Andy Carroll's old thread and holy shit the amount of grief he was given. Mitrovic is going to be fine in the Championship.

Real Madrid - PSG is canny. 3-1 now, some kid broke the ice for PSG after a nice dribble followed by two goals by Thomas Meunier who came on as a right back after 10 mins of play weirdly enough. Marcelo just scored from a pen.

Why on earth did we buy Shelvey.

On that note. The fake Fat Sam profile on Twitter is hilarious. "It's a good thing my plonker is so fucking massive, because I've been plunging it into a lot of Premier League arse this season. Have it."

Last time around Carroll(17), Nolan(17), Lövenkrands(13) and Ameobi(10) scored 57 goals between them and we lorded the league. I'm pretty sure Mitrovic, Gayle, Perez and Ritchie can achieve the same. I'm actually pretty excited to see if Mitrovic can step up to the occasion and find some confidence, all hell might break loose. Another striker wouldn't exactly hurt but I agree with most that we should put an emphasis on finding someone who can create and score from midfield.

Don't really mind him signing at all. Going to be a long season and if I recall correctly Benitez likes to rotate so it's positive to have a bit more experience and especially height. Actually I had him confused with Ryan Nelsen all up until yesterday. That worried me a bit.

If you want to know what's wrong with English football you really don't have to look no further. Those five managers share between them over 2000 games and a whopping count of two trophies. An FA Cup and a fucking Intertoto cup. English coaching is in the dark ages and has been for a few decades now and it has to be noted as a serious problem that the last Englishman to mount a serious challenge for the Premier League was Kevin Keegan with us more than 20 years ago. Also an Englishman hasn't progressed to the Champions League final probably since Liverpool under Joe Fagan(?). Absolutely rotten to the core.

Never forget. http://mads.thescore.com/rayhudsonsoundboard

Of course England's repeated failures are down to bad coaching. Just look at the "talent" pool of English managers. Who is the last English world class manager? Clough? The last Englishman to win the league was Kendall in 1989 ffs and really there haven't been many that have come close to it in the last 20 years or so. Also, not only have English clubs largely failed to develop local youngsters, they've also failed to develop foreign young players that arrive in England. Supposedly they don't make the grade in the PL yet they are able to develop into top class players abroad. Gerard Piqué, Paul Pogba, Jerome Boateng just to name a few from the top of my head. There is something terribly wrong with English coaching.

aaaaaaaaahahahaahahahahahahaha i'm gonn get so wasted tonight

ahahaahaha fuck off england

I'm all but crying! Fucking amazing, and getting England next. Surreal.

I've touched on this before but I will never for the life of me understand why more players don't train up a giant throw in. Huge asset for Iceland even if it's not pretty.

Against these?

Dier looks the real deal though.

I thought so as well. I've seen Iceland play a lot better against big teams than they did yesterday e.g against Holland home and away and Turkey. The midfield got ripped apart time and time again and were ultimately saved with last ditch defending from either the two centre backs or the GK. Normally Iceland does a better job of defending higher up the pitch and maintains the ball better. Usually we don't have to rely on siege defending like yesterday which resulted in probably the most stressful game I've ever seen. Nonetheless a great result and a huge boost for the next two games.

I'm so excited for tonight's match I might have a seizure soon.

Called it pre-tournament and got a load of s*** for it You got a load of s*** because you said their squad wasn't great which isn't true. Belgium were good once they made the subs Said Lukaku has 3 in 6 months, shown nowt to reiterate the hype. Was s**** today. Said Hazard was s**** this season. Was s**** today. Alderwiereld & Vertonghen are top defenders. De Bruyne is class. After that, it's a load of good to just above 'good' players, nowt special Hazard was good in the second half IMO. De Bruyne was about a million times worse. Mertens and Carrasco are very good players, Dembele is very good and should be starting. Courtois is class. The manager is the problem not the players Disagree, manager is s*** but to say the players aren't the problem is far too simplified and is taking attention away from the fact they don't have that great of a team. All their players are overrated as s*** . They don't have a single good playmaking CM or decent DM, no good fullbacks, Lukaku has like a 1 in 5 record at international level and most of their CBs are poor defenders but get hyped because they can score. ( the Spurs ones deficiencies get hidden because Pochettino is so good at protecting them) There's just zero balance or changes of pace in this team and as alluded to they lack goal threat, yet somehow they are treated as some amazing team. Not to mention Hazard has hardly had a big match great performance in his career really( only one i can think of is against City when Demichelis played in midfield ), De Bruyne is probably their best player and even he isn't of the level required. The rest are nowhere near as good as advertised and especially not good enough to make them a legitimate international threat. Come on man. Nainggolan is sought after by the biggest clubs in the world, Alderweireld is maybe the best centre back in the EPL, Dembele had an amazing season and Lukaku just wrapped up a 25 goal season with a pretty meh Everton side. And that's leaving out the likes of Courtois, de Bruyne, Hazard, Batshuayi etc. It's a great group of players no matter how you look at it - however they've clearly not moulded into a team and that's the problem.

Man City couldn't use Boateng and Everton couldn't use Mustafi. There's something terribly wrong with english coaching.

Sometimes I wonder how high the percentage is of footballers not really interested in football. Got me thinking earlier today when I read a piece on a player called Björn Sigurðarson who just got released from his contract at Wolves. Of the supposed 'golden generation' that took the Icelandic national team all the way to the Euro's this summer he was supposed to be the one - the pick of the bunch. While his teammates from the Icelandic U-21 went on to various degrees of success with their clubs and solidified their position in a relatively strong national team, Björn's career faded slowly but surely out and he never became a part of the national squad and their relative success. Granted he has had his share of injuries and bad luck but first and foremost he is known to be completely uninterested in football altogether. "I think I haven't seen a Barcelona or a Real Madrid game. I'm not interested in football. My girlfriend is though so I sometimes have to watch games with her", that's an actual quote from him. The two centre backs of the Icelandic team, Ragnar Sigurðsson and Kári Árnason, have also repeatedly stated that they're not interested in football at all and never watch games in their spare time. Maybe Icelandic players can allow themselves to come across more sincere in interviews because of limited coverage but I don't know actually. Like most of us I used to play as a kid. All of us were absolutely mad about football. Supported a team in England, went to the domestic games, followed international football and the CL closely. That is to say all of us bar one. And somehow he winds up a professional footballer in a foreign league. And the only one of us playing at the Euro's this summer. Strange.

That stat about Dummett as one of the league's fastest... ahem.

Did Darlow just spit in his gloves and rub his spit in his hair?

Doesn't work either