Dr Gloom

great goal from robinho. can brazil and the argies meet in the final? two teams of the competition so far for me along with the dutch. a south american derby as a final would be class though.

he's had two crap world cups but it's a bit premature to be writing his obituary, especially after the season he just had. i wouldn't bet against him being man u's top scorer again next season.

the only grey area is where you stop and restart the game and how often these kind of decisions can be made. i think the tennis thing of 3 appeals per set could apply equally well to football. say three a match, but you keep those in hand that you argue correctly. then play goes back whereever the appeal was made from -whether it's an offside or a goal line clearance, hand ball decision etc. i suppose the skipper or manager would have to decide on when and how to appeal. it seems mad though that almost every other major sport - tennis, cricket, rugby - has this kind of technology but football doesn't. blatter is living in the past tbf

interesting guardian blog on this today http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/20...-players-future

Who should've played at centre-back then? his options were limited in defence this time because of injuries but in future, who knows? rio plus one other? i suppose dawson and richards are the two that came through the under 21s but neither play every week for their clubs. the chances are that terry and rio will carry on whoever the next manager is but i wouldn't be sorry to have seen the last of terry if someone else can step up their game. That's my point really. it's a fair point. doesn't excuse some of capello's other mistakes though.

Who should've played at centre-back then? his options were limited in defence this time because of injuries but in future, who knows? rio plus one other? i suppose dawson and richards are the two that came through the under 21s but neither play every week for their clubs. the chances are that terry and rio will carry on whoever the next manager is but i wouldn't be sorry to have seen the last of terry if someone else can step up their game.

i was pretty gutted last night like. it's easy to get caught up in it and still believe we have a chance even when all the evidence points to the contrary. it's also nice as a geordie based in london to go to the pub and watch a match where everyone is shouting for the same team.

if we do make wholesale changes, who goes and who stays? Would a team liek this below do better than the current crop? ----------------------------Hart Johnson------Rio------------------Dawson or Richards?-----A Cole --------------------------Rodwell -------------Gerrard------------------------Milner ------Lennon----------------------------------------Walcott -------------------------Rooney

i don't think we need to completely start again but the end of the line must have come for the likes of heskey, carragher and lampard. perhaps even terry too. i think we should never again play two typically british centre backs that can win the ball in the air but can't run. you need at least one centre back that can run and pass his way out of defence. capello was very conservative with the players he picked. he probably should have gambled more on youth. look at the germans - their team was built on young, mobile players.

What do you reckon Capello did wrong though? He had very limited options in too many areas. Getting rid of the manager is just papering over the cracks imo. I think he might walk anyway like. i blame the players for being gutless but capello did get a lot wrong in this tournament. he was very disappointing after a good qualifying campaign. playing players out of position, playing players that were half fit, not having the balls to drop or sub under-performing big name players. this is something i thought he would be good at - he wasn't afraid to drop beckham at real madrid but seemed to adopt the sven problem of being afraid to drop or sub the likes of lampard and rooney. his faith in hesky was bonkers. bringing a guy on who doesn't score when you're chasing two goals left me speechless, especially when crouch, a guy with a good international scoring record, was hardly used. i think we also saw a fairly stubborn coach at this world cup. his refusal to adjust his rigid 4-4-2 when it was clear that it wasn't working and the whole nation was crying out for 4-5-1 with gerrard just behind rooney. again, very sven-like. too rigid. i don't think flat banks of four work at the highest level anymore, especially when our holding palyer is unfit and the two centre halfs are slow and defend like amauters. What would you have differently and who would you have played instead though? I think there are different options he could have used but not ones that would have made much different. That's my point really, he was pretty restricted. I don't think we can do much better either. he was restricted by the players being gutless and playing with fear but he didn't do himself any favours. i don't think capello has enhanced his reputation in anyway after this tournament. in fact, i think he should hang his head as low as the players. he got a lot wrong. obviously we can all talk a good game as armchair pundits but i think some of what he got wrong was basics. he was just too stubborn as a manager, too rigid and didn't seem to have a plan b. in terms of what i'd do differently , there's a list as long as my arm: i probably would have played a 4-5-1 after it became clear 4-4-2 wasn't working. i wouldn't have played gerrard and lampard in the middle togethe rlike he did for the usa game. the sven era proved all they do is get in each other's way. i wouldn't have played gerrard out wide. it was a waste of our best central midfielder. he should have played instead of lampard in the middle, or just behind rooney at the expense of heskey. i probably wouldn't have played heskey at all. this whole "he's a great team player" argument doesn't stack up at international level when you look at his lack of goals. i wouldn't have taken half fit players like barry or perma crocks like king. i would have used players like lennon and instructed them to stick to the wing and attack their fullback instead of cutting inside, like he does week in week out for spurs. lennon must be blamed for his poor performances - like most of them he played with fear - but it's the manager's job to tell him where he's going wrong and how to put it right. i was disappointed that capello droped our only player with genuine pace and he wasn't able to get the best out of him. i would have brought wallcott too or adam johnson ahead of swp too. johnson did enough to be a wild card pick and probably would have got a game or two to be fair.

What do you reckon Capello did wrong though? He had very limited options in too many areas. Getting rid of the manager is just papering over the cracks imo. I think he might walk anyway like. i blame the players for being gutless but capello did get a lot wrong in this tournament. he was very disappointing after a good qualifying campaign. playing players out of position, playing players that were half fit, not having the balls to drop or sub under-performing big name players. this is something i thought he would be good at - he wasn't afraid to drop beckham at real madrid but seemed to adopt the sven problem of being afraid to drop or sub the likes of lampard and rooney. his faith in hesky was bonkers. bringing a guy on who doesn't score when you're chasing two goals left me speechless, especially when crouch, a guy with a good international scoring record, was hardly used. i think we also saw a fairly stubborn coach at this world cup. his refusal to adjust his rigid 4-4-2 when it was clear that it wasn't working and the whole nation was crying out for 4-5-1 with gerrard just behind rooney. again, very sven-like. too rigid. i don't think flat banks of four work at the highest level anymore, especially when our holding palyer is unfit and the two centre halfs are slow and defend like amauters.

i never thought rooney would as shite as he has been. that's two world cups he hasn't turned up for now. at least last time he had the excuse of being unfit.

the parallels are uncanny. at least the rest of the country gets an idea of what it's like to support the toon now

it was all so predictable. the better players (on paper), yet again played with fear. how many of that german team would make it into the england starting 11 and yet they played like a team. they had the collective winning mentality that comes with years of winning. the collective failures of england teams past weighed on the players' minds yet again. golden generation? more like over-rated, over paid bottlers. should haver won it but played like a bunch of pussys. we hardly deserved to make it through the group stages. capello dropped a bollock too by not dropping lampard, not subbing rooney, picking players that weren't fit and playing gerard wide left.

albarn getting snoop and de la soul on stage with gorillaz was pretty cool. looks like it's going to be a good one this year with good weather for once

No, they are covered in things about england. gets fucking annoying. Another example, in the portugal and brazil match, half time, bbc breaks into something about england. Makes you want to punch the screen. and yet you post annoying shite on an english football club's fan site. explain the irony.

Since Chris Waddle? mcmanaman did alreet out wide on the left for england

that dutch bird is a moose like

i suppose he'd be good enough cover at right back. premier league experience and all that. seems a bit of a sorry state of affairs that we're limited to going for bolton rejects these days.

3 pm next saturday. balls, i was afraid of that. supposed to be flying to spain then. flight is blatantly getting switched

nice read from simon kuper in the ft England’s elimination ritual http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3ccc82d0-7e12-11...144feabdc0.html “It was disbelief,” England’s midfielder Alan Ball summed up the mood in the team’s dressing room after West Germany knocked them out of the World Cup in 1970. England’s quadrennial elimination is one of the country’s few surviving national rituals. It may happen in Port Elizabeth today: England need to beat Slovenia to be certain of reaching the second round. It is time to establish whether, on this occasion, each phase of the ritual has been respected. Phase one: England enter the World Cup certain they will win it. Alf Ramsey, the only English manager to win the trophy, forecast the victory of 1966. But his prescience becomes less impressive when you realise that almost every England manager forecast victory in the World Cup, including Ramsey both times he didn’t win. Fabio Capello, England’s manager at least until this afternoon, observed this ritual. “My team, the England team, we can beat all the teams,” he said last month. Like all his predecessors, Capello spoke for a confident nation. Phase two: the campaign is upended by a freakish piece of bad luck that the English conclude could only happen to them. Here the current campaign breaks with ritual. Normally, the freakish bad luck happens in a later round: the tummy bug that felled keeper Gordon Banks in 1970, Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” in 1986, or David Beckham’s red card in 1998. This time, it came only 40 minutes into England’s tournament: the soft US shot that trickled through Robert Green’s hands into the net. Phase three: England lose to a former wartime enemy. In five of their last seven World Cups, they went out against either Germany or Argentina. The matches fit seamlessly into the British tabloid view of history, except for the outcome. England’s defeats to Germany, because of their grandiose yet repetitious character, are tragicomic. By contrast, elimination against a ski-mad country of 2m people would be merely comic (if you aren’t English). To honour ritual, England need to revive national hubris by triumphing against Slovenia, before losing to Germany in the second round this weekend, ideally on penalties. Phase four: the nation decides the team is spoiled, overpaid and unpatriotic. For some players “the triple lion badge of England could be three old tabby cats”, lamented the Daily Express in 1966, and possibly again tomorrow. The fan who wandered into the English changing-room and castigated the players for drawing against Algeria on Friday night felt the same way. “Most of them didn’t even try,” Pavlos Joseph said afterwards. However, these ritual denunciations are coming too early. By tradition, English hubris swells to unfathomable levels before being punctured. Phase five: a scapegoat is found. Usually this only happens post-elimination, but the current squabble between Capello and his ousted captain John Terry is best understood as early jockeying to assign the role. Capello runs the greater risk. Ritually, England’s scapegoat is never an outfield player who has “battled” all match. Even if the player directly caused the elimination by missing a penalty, he is a “hero”. The ideal scapegoat is either a perfidious foreigner – Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo in 2006 – or an English management figure, such as chief selector Joe Mears in 1958. Capello’s bad luck is to be both foreigner and management figure. Phase six: England enter the next World Cup certain they will win it. It’s widely believed that England’s eliminations cause misery. In fact, the ritual provides comfort, by drawing the nation together, and connecting English past with present. That’s why it’s essential that the ritual sequence be respected. Here’s to England-Germany this weekend. Simon Kuper is co-author of Why England Lose: & Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained (HarperSport, £7.99)

future newcastle coach?

i'm not sure england have the collective mental strength required to beat the germans. i can see a glorious failure on the cards to them and if not them, to the argies.