Neil

Ah that's a funny statement. Who said that? Haven't heard that one before... Gary Lineker after the Italia '90 shootout I believe. I know man.

Alan Pardew would be proud.

Nice one lads. I've got a plethora of group-stage bets on as posted whenever it was - decent start to my audacious points/to finish bottom ones, with Greece and Australia beaten and Argies winning.

Ah that's a funny statement. Who said that? Haven't heard that one before...

Impressive performance, best of the tournament, but played a poor team who were defensively a mess and on the end of a poor red card decision.

Does qualifying play that much of a part in how the actual tournament pans out though? Example soon to be illustrated: Holland. They'll reach the quarters/semis in spectacular fashion, and then fizzle out like always. Precisely what I mean.

It'll be interesting to see how the US play against them. Lower level of opposition but how much of last night was the fact it was a massive game for them against us?

Does qualifying play that much of a part in how the actual tournament pans out though? Example soon to be illustrated: Holland.

Fwiw I think we'll comprehensively beat Algeria 3-0. Still, if that happened, wouldn't expect free-flowing football as we're just not going to get that.

What did you make of last night btw Mike? How did you rate your performance?

I don't get it, we put in a good shift. We were America's final, they won't up their game against Algeria or Slovenia like they did against us. Australia are doing their best right now to make Germany look good, they have been shocking. It's just the huge difference in the way the teams go about their play. Even if this game were still 0 - 0 the qulaity of play from Germany is just miles ahead of anything England was doing yesterday. I have no doubt that Germany would produce this type of football against USA too. England might also be winning this game 2 - o if it were them bu it would have been disjointed and unimpressive. Germany just look miles more confident and sure of themselves and what they are trying to do. Not getting those crosses past The Gooch. Shoot from distance. That's the trick against us. Funny you should say that. You're an Everton fan, am I wrong? I don't feel like I'm wrong here. I was getting at the fact you were saying the trick against your lot is to shoot from range. I think it is, tbh. Defenders sort of have their shit together in the box, but right outside is a lawless wasteland sometimes. It's not as if England and USA are going to meet up again, though. Oh we'll meet up. Next time, it's personal. Like, really, really personal.

I don't get it, we put in a good shift. We were America's final, they won't up their game against Algeria or Slovenia like they did against us. Australia are doing their best right now to make Germany look good, they have been shocking. It's just the huge difference in the way the teams go about their play. Even if this game were still 0 - 0 the qulaity of play from Germany is just miles ahead of anything England was doing yesterday. I have no doubt that Germany would produce this type of football against USA too. England might also be winning this game 2 - o if it were them bu it would have been disjointed and unimpressive. Germany just look miles more confident and sure of themselves and what they are trying to do. Not getting those crosses past The Gooch. Shoot from distance. That's the trick against us. Funny you should say that. You're an Everton fan, am I wrong? I don't feel like I'm wrong here. I was getting at the fact you were saying the trick against your lot is to shoot from range.

Yes. A defensive midfielder.

I don't get it, we put in a good shift. We were America's final, they won't up their game against Algeria or Slovenia like they did against us. Australia are doing their best right now to make Germany look good, they have been shocking. It's just the huge difference in the way the teams go about their play. Even if this game were still 0 - 0 the qulaity of play from Germany is just miles ahead of anything England was doing yesterday. I have no doubt that Germany would produce this type of football against USA too. England might also be winning this game 2 - o if it were them bu it would have been disjointed and unimpressive. Germany just look miles more confident and sure of themselves and what they are trying to do. Not getting those crosses past The Gooch. Shoot from distance. That's the trick against us. Funny you should say that.

Best team so far, though it's not saying much when you see their opposition. Still, the nature of the performance has been impressive. Very controlled.

Oh my word. Edit: SDBS

I wasnt disappointed so much the amount of chances we created. Lennon, SWP, Heksey were all put into very good goal scoring positions. Its natural and easy to say "player X" would have scored but its bloody annoying that 3 different players wasted good scoring opportunities. Heskey's in particular had me raging - smacking it straight at the keeper when clean through is unforgivable in my book. Finished it like I would expect a full back or a centre half to in the same position. Like they said in the studio afterwards, if it's Alan Shearer, you'd put your mortgage on it. Well, at least he works well alongside Rooney. It's just staggering that people are happy to have a striker up front who has so little goalscoring ability and when presented with an easy chance, completely fluffs it. How on earth can we afford to have a non-scoring striker in the team? Incredible. And breathe.

8/15 on the outright win is canny in itself, I reckon the Germans might do better than a few have said. Star quality is low but, cliche or not, you can still see them getting far.

Germany -1 8/5 looks tasty.

ITV commentating, fucking hell man. Forgot Lukovic had been given a yellow card already (actually iirc completely ignored it), shocked that a blatant handball was penalised. Give me BBC over this anyday.

http://live.itv.com/episode/7

Algeria bottom, but if they score aren't they top?

:lol:

"I just felt you could have got a bit more cheese on that. Poor." 'But it's just just cheese Mark.' '.........Poor.' Must be a bastard to play Monopoly with. Shouting "CHANCE!" every ten minutes. "And when you have that bank error in your favour, you HAVE to press home your advantage. But you didn't. What were you doing?"

Crash course in blame delegation. Could understand them trying to blank out Gosling's goal, but ITV missing a Gerrard goal? Speechless.