Neil

Insipid stuff so far. Portugal are disjointed and lethargic, Czechs are comfortable without creating a good chance.

No, don't keep fouling that player and getting booked.

POTY.

Have Nani FGS @ 9/1, though Portugal generally aren't playing well.

He probably thinks the 22 players are robots.

Yup. Portugal have completely fucked up 2 or 3 very good breaking opportunities.

Need to have these skills to win.

You'll do well to haul me off top spot having 9 of my players. Pilar hatrick.

Paddy Power: Ronaldo to score in a Portugal win (90 mins) - 2/1 Also, Money back on the usual selection of bets if Ronaldo scores first.

Wasn't going to dabble in the footy later but a little bit of profit on the horsies means I'll probably stick on a Ronaldo-related bet.

Starboard's a non-runner according to Skybet.

Opinion Poll E/W, then Fast or Free E/W. Decent 45 mins work in the office. Although nowhere near the level of Nath, fucking outstanding stuff.

Had a little on Opinion Poll E/W, good stuff.

Good player in "being a danger" shocker. We've got a good chance. You look at Italy and don't see much to fear IMO. Likewise I can't see them going "Fuck, it's James Milner!" We've been relatively clinical so far. We've a decent shot at getting through.

Ctrl, Forward, B, RT, Alt, #, F, T, N.

Yup, that's right. Iniesta was laughing as he took the ball around him.

Our worst performance was last night, for me. We unwisely gave Ukraine - the home team in a massive, massive game in their history arguably - the encouragement to get forward and make things hard for us. Poor ball retention in the 1st half, defensively not solid at all and Welbeck and Rooney did little to help. 2nd half was an improvement albeit a million miles from great. However, against France, although they demonstrated they had better technical players for the most part, what damage did they do? What clear cut chances did they produce? I'm struggling to think of many. I also don't think they got us into any sort of trance with their passing; both teams seemed happy enough with a point. Against Sweden, it was a bad night for defences but overall I thought we did enough to merit the win. We've barely been "outplayed" this tournament. We've certainly been under pressure but outplayed? Don't think so.

Fuck that, rock paper scissors for who has to change a scoreline prediction.

Might pick the entire Germany team.

Unfortunately for you, I have Benzema to be France's top scorer and he hasn't looked like scoring once.

Without thinking about it too much, I'd go with something very similar to this. Schweinsteiger and Iniesta both with (somewhat obvious) strong shouts for midfield.

Stupid question, but do you need to put a £1 on a Lucky 15? I never see anyone mention anything else, but a £1 stake on it. £15 for straight wins, £30 for E/W L15. I think?

Your guess is as good as mine. Had one alright day during the last round of games and three distinctly poor ones. RESILIENCE

Fucking hell, lad at work won 2.5k on a £1 Lucky 15 yesterday at Ascot. For the one that didn't win, he'd scribbled out the winner - would've been 22k.

There is a level of detachment in that sense. But I'd argue this is not England-specific, this is football-wide. The money involved in the sport nowadays is a big contributing factor to a sense of alienation with pretty much all football players, at least at the top level.