Fantail Breeze

So we aren’t allowed to point out any flaws, because he had a great first half a season? Signings like DCL and Ake will not take us forward, not to the level we aspire to anyway. His signings at Bournemouth were largely crap, paying over the odds for English signings (or from English clubs). I won’t dig it out again but it was a remarkable number of signings. So far 4/5 January signings were all English based (or English) and now we’re being linked with many more. The market is crap and over priced. Our scouting needs to extend well beyond if we want to succeed. Of course there will be one or two deals to be done at the right time, but not the majority. It’s not saying the quality of those players is constantly crap - if Ake was £20m, sign him up tomorrow. The price he’d go for though would be ridiculous and better spent on two players. We’re not going to have a limitless pot of money, at least not all at once.

It’s a valid criticism. His performance this season was exceptional overall, but it’s still okay to say his transfer dealings across his career have been patchy at best - largely because of that obsession.

DCL and Ake would be terrible value for money. Would be paying way over the odds. DCL would be a shite signing in general, always injured and crap attitude. Ake would be alright, but there would be much better options for the cost/we could bring in two or three. We really need to move away from Howe’s continued British market obsession.

I haven’t said that anybody has said that. The last two pages on here could be read on RTG with the amount of backtracking.

People were literally creaming themselves because his social media team liked a few Instagram posts in January. Now he’s the worst player in the world and we’re right to stay away.

Do Wales not play at the Millennium Stadium?

This is the only issue, imo. We’d have to appoint a foreign manager if we wanted a decent one and that’d do nothing for the Brexiters in the stands or the media.

Croatia created three or four really good chances (scoring from one) and we had shots from 30 yards out. He hasn’t though, that’s the whole point. We’re playing dullard football and not using those individuals in the right way. I’m saying this is our best collection of individuals making a team, but the performance and success they have had hasn’t been as good as it could be - because of the very obvious limitations on the sideline. So you agree the previous England teams pretty much picked themselves but there is one of two players from several generations that’d get into this one. Makes no sense as a counter point. In 2010 we took Peter Crouch and Emile fucking Heskey to a World Cup We’re now taking players like Rashford, Sancho, Saka to sit on the bench.

Southgate has been as successful as Tottenham, who are constantly widely ridiculed for not being successful.

Their equivalents across other teams isn’t particularly fair though - have we ever had a team of players as good as this? Comparing Pickford to David Seaman and Maguire to Terry Butcher isn’t the point. Individually we may have had better players, but this is the best team with the best options. The England team pretty much used to pick itself. There are so many options now.

“Italian side on the back foot until they suddenly gained a foothold in the closing phase of the first half. Italy dominated possession, and it was no surprise when they restored parity, then looking the more likely winners as Southgate's side, so full of running early on, started to labour“ Our own media are willing to accept Italy were miles the better team, why can’t you? We were battered in the sense that we didn’t have the football, didn’t create chances and provided fuck all. As I said earlier, almost identical to the Croatia game which he clearly took a lot of learning from.

Was that the famous social media effort where he was actually offside? Read a match report from the game, we started brightly, scored a goal and then completely faded. It was pretty much one way traffic from then on in. It was a very similar performance to the Italy one. He didn’t learn much from that.

In comparison to the opposition it certainly is and my point was regarding the attacking talent. We don’t have to fight with impossible teams like Brazil and Spain who were exceptional at times when we’ve had other impressive sides. Our squad is one of the best in the world. We’re lucky Belgium are thick and are persisting with Martinez.

Love some fake facts to justify Southgate. Sort of stuff we used to ridicule people for about Bruce. We were battered by Italy. Was it 20-odd shots to about 3 over 120 minutes at a Wembley final? Only shot on target was a goal in the first five minutes. Just refreshed my memory of the Croatia game and that was exactly the same. 2 shots on target in 120 minutes, Croatia with twice the amount of shots. Less possession. If anything we were fortunate we didn’t lose more heavily, rather than in ET and pens.

Minging football winning fuck all with one of the most talented attacking sides we’ve ever had in most of our lifetimes. A decent manager and we’d have won the Euros. His tactical limitations fail us in the big games, this English side is good enough to beat a majority of the crap we’ve come up against by default. Bizarre how much support he gets. Longer we keep him the less chance we’ll have of taking advantage of having such a decent squad. This team should walk into a QF/SF and easily will. That’ll be enough to keep him in a job and we’ll be stuck in this cycle forever.

They’re linked to a different club every month and none of them have any substance. Lazy journalism.

Would be really pleased at this signing. If we could rely on Wilson staying fit, I’d say we wouldn’t even need to make another striker signing after this. Although after this I’d be prioritising CB, LB and a DM. Good to see we’re in the market early and pleasing to see it’s the right type of signing and a reasonable cost.

Completely missed that Villa have signed Diego Carlos, who was apparently a top target only a few months ago. One would hope we have someone else lined up.

My mistake, wrongly thought he was there a year after he was. Point still stands though if you remove the word ‘terrible’.

He was massively overhyped by the media at Sheff Utd, he wasn’t anywhere near as good as was made out. He made a fair number of mistakes. When De Gea was dropped, there was also a reason he only lasted about 5 games (despite it being a winning run) before De Gea put him back on the bench. Again, very shaky and not good enough. He’s 25. He’s hardly a bairn. If he was good enough he wouldn’t be sat on Man Utd’s bench and only getting moves to a terrible Sheff Utd side. He’s not better than Dubravka. It’d be the equivalent of replacing Gayle with Adam Armstrong.

Haven't said it in relation to the (albeit tenuous) links to Phillips - because he’s not crap. Dean Henderson is terrible and not an improvement on what we have, would be a complete waste. We don’t need to be RTG and pretend he’s any good just because he’s linked. I was wrong about Targett, more than happy to admit that. Was absolutely right about Wood though.

Henderson would be a Wood signing. He’s crap.

When you say linked I didn’t realise that meant an imaginary link they’ve made up themselves

I’m sure they only review decisions when players make a massive fuss out of them.

Personally thought he tried to jump the challenge and only went down because his right foot was kicked by Colback. Another one of those where if it’s outside the box, it’s always given but they shirk making the decision inside the box.