Kid Icarus

Rafa coming back to Newcastle at any point would be a disaster now imo. It was easy to put up with the dull football when it was pragmatism and the us vs them feeling when we were completely hamstrung and he was a huge coup in our circumstances. I couldn't put up with it now having got a taste of the much more exciting possession based football Howe is aiming for.

Had the 'God save our gracious Queen' part of that on standby most of the last fortnight

He's England's all-time goal scoring defender and despite being shit at Man United, is still playing well for England. Southgate would be mad to drop him.

He's a system player, and he knows the England one from doing it at Chelsea, but he's nowhere near the same player. At Chelsea he scores or assists in 2 out of every 3 matches, but at a base level he's much more involved and has a bit of flair about him as well. For England all of his work seems functional and mainly off the ball. Agree about Foden as well like. Sterling seems much deeper now as well.

Mason Mount even more so, he's the inverse Harry Maguire.

On what planet do you not give another tournament to a manager who just got us to a semi and then a final though? That's literally the deep end

Absolutely no one should have this opinion about those players imo. No one had anything even approaching this opinion about the same players 2-4 years ago.

I've watched England, managed by better managers and with better players put in shit performance after shit performance at international tournaments, losing and drawing against the likes of Iceland, Algeria, Romania, Sweden, and USA. But I'm supposed to believe that Southgate, the only manager to ever get England to a World Cup semi and Euro final did it because of luck.

The England kit looks much better as a full kit, quite like it.

It's beyond irritating how good Donnarumma is like, he's ridiculous.

You're allowed to do whatever you want, just expect people to disagree with you.

I cannot believe we're 1-0 down away to the European Champions considering the players we have available.

Hahaha coz hes woke!!

It's an obvious sympathy award. No way has he been the best England player in 21-22, likewise Phillips wasn't previously. Should be Kane and 20-21 should have been Sterling.

He was incredible at the start of 12/13. The one player that more or less forced us to get results at home. Involved in everything.

E I E I E I O is the only song that seems to get the most amount of people involved And TBF it's an enjoyable one to sing

You can basically infer that: He's a dribbler not a passer He's good at breaking up opposition play He's very good at travelling with the ball, often into the penalty area He often finds himself with the ball in the box He's underperforming his xG which suggests he's getting in the right positions, if he can match his goals to his xG he can be a 1 in 5 midfielder based on his xG per 90.

Unless you're looking for a complete player, they tell you the profile of a player more than they necessarily tell you whether they're good or bad imo.

I've noticed that neither FBRefs or Transfermarkt recorded his cross to Bruno in the Leicester match as an assist either for some reason.

There's some extreme cherry picking going on here like. First, you don't use a data set of 7 matches. But if you do, you don't only look at passing Turns out that when you look at everything he's in the top centiles for things like xG, xA, shots, shot creation from dribbling, shot creation from defending, crosses, pressures, tackles, dribbles into the penalty area https://fbref.com/en/players/a3b03921/scout/11566/Joe-Willock-Scouting-Report Or if you don't want to use data positively skewed by such a small data set, you can just look over the last year.

That's 224 732 clubs in the first round

There's no real reason why starting Botman over Burn at home to fucking Bournemouth should be a match-defining decision. I really don't think it's worth picking apart, particularly as Burn was probably the only player that wasn't poor on Saturday and Schar was one of the worst. It seems like an odd thing to hone in on, the whole game plan wasn't right and there was no hand-in-glove connection between the midfield and Isak and the wingers and Isak.

That happens now, it's just a two-way thing in terms of how vociferous it is.

I think the reality is that it's a two-way thing and has been for as long as I've been watching football.

It was my first time back in years but it felt unique like and the match didn't help to get the crowd in the right mood. Weird atmosphere among fans pre-match, weird atmosphere in SJP, strange pre-match music, subdued feeling with the minute's silence, a mixed reaction to the national anthem with very few singing it and some sitting down. All of it contributed to a feeling of things just being a bit off. Then it just continued throughout the match with all of the things that are annoying, people coming in 5-10 minutes late, leaving on 40 minutes then the same again 2nd half. Absolute never-has-beens telling Kieran Trippier what is and isn't a good ball or decision. Players doing something positive and winning a corner and instead of encouraging them, whinging because it wasn't the perfect ball. Far too many go on like football consumers rather than supporters. Like I say though the match itself did little to lift the crowd and take them away from that. Maybe if it had no one would have been leaving, whinging and so on.