acrossthepond

I agree with you both. He has come on a lot as a player under Howe, matured you might say. I saw a great moment from him early in the second half where after having lost the ball in typical fashion, he dashed back and attempted a tackle from behind that, combined with Burn, somehow just about got the ball away from a Man U player, possibly Antony. No chance the Bruce-vintage ASM makes that tackle. But he'll never be good enough for what this team is trying to accomplish. He's too moody, too self-centered, and too lacking in discipline. After he's been sold we can remember the brilliant moments, much like with Ben Arfa, but not the absolutely dire performances where he spent half his time on his arse and the rest losing the ball running down blind alleys.

Rashford at CB for Wilson's header That's what happens when your manager is a fraud propped up by nearly a billion pounds' worth of signings.

I'm just going to say it. It's bothered me for years. I don't think Harry Kane is any good. At all. I think if he played for Southampton or Wolves or even West Ham, we'd never hear a word about him and there'd not even be a whisper of an England call-up. He's a slightly above average PL striker, hence why no bigger club than Spurs was ever willing to go in for him, also considering his injury record and the monumental price tag it would take to sign him. He just doesn't represent value for money because he's not actually going to improve your side. He can score loads against Panama and Everton (similar level of opposition quality) but in big games he goes missing, North London derbies excepted, and forget his record in big tournaments for England. It doesn't even bear mentioning. He's massively overrated, mentioning him in the same breath as Shearer and even Phillips is a joke.

We played very well considering the circumstances. Unfortunately we switched off three times and paid the price for each of them. ASM had one of his best games for us in a very long while, so that's a positive to take. None of us will want to lose this way but at the end of the day it was a good performance against a team worth hundreds of millions of pounds more than ours. If it'd been 0-5 or 0-6 (as could easily have happened if we'd gone into damage control) that would've weakened us greatly before the final, but as it is we didn't disgrace ourselves. After 15 minutes of the first half you'd have taken this result and so would Howe.

Catch yourself on man, let's not forget where we were 12 months ago. If anyone had told you we'd be looking down at Spurs, Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool on January 31st, and in a cup final, you'd have laughed them off the planet. This lot have made it clear they're not going to buy for the sake of buying, or get sucked into panic buys. Howe and co have a plan and they're executing it.

Plenty of dust in the air at the sounds of Que Sera, Sera...must've got something in me eye.

Really hope this isn't true. I trust in Howe and co of course but I fail to see how a wide player is the solution to our shortage up front, especially as Willock's been doing well there, Joelinton can play there, ASM is still available off the bench, Isak is even supposed to be able to play wide left. How does this player plug any sort of hole in our system? I saw a comment earlier about buying for potential - I don't think we're at the point where we can spend 40m on "potential." Now, if we sold ASM, I could see it maybe.

re: Gordon, I'm not sure I would even at 4m. He's a shit clogger who had three months of decent form. 40m for that clown is the sort of transfer Chelsea would do, not the shrewd business that Howe and co have made their trademark.

Imagine a timeline where we got Conte instead of Howe. How different would things be now?

I was still fuming about what I saw as a handball in the buildup before even the first penalty shout. The second one was a nonsense for me, he was looking for it 100% and it never should've been awarded. Football is not a non-contact sport even in the box. Justice was done when the plank's feet failed him, quite literally, from the spot. You could see as soon as Mitrovic took it that it came off his feet wrong and never would've gone where it did if it had been a natural strike. We rode our luck again today I felt but we can trot out the old cliche about what top teams do. Are we a top team yet? We'll evaluate at the end of the season. Leicester were a top team a few seasons back and now they're lower than dirt. I want to get carried away - trust me, I do - but I'll try to hover around the edges of team bedwetter for a little bit longer.

He's Brazilian (maybe? Or maybe he's Jewish? Or Jew-ish, I can't remember and neither can he) and if you haven't heard of him yet I suggest you do a little Googling. He's one from the Stephen Ireland school.

A very happy Christmas to all of you from over the water! Lamb biryani and mint chocolate cake to come tonight, then we'll have the more traditional stuff tomorrow with my mam, dad and brothers.

I'm sure this has been mentioned, and I'm also going to preface it by saying I didn't see the game or any of England's play in this WC, but I read this morning Southgate has won as many games in knock-out competition as managers in the previous 48 years have combined. We could do far, far worse (and have.) I don't know if we could do much better. He's transformed playing for England from a hassle, an obligation that "big-name" dickheads of the past had to carve out time for into something that our players actually want to do, that they actually care about and view as a privilege again. Keep.

7 minutes Fuck off man

Fuck's sake, this thread made for some bad reading later on. Made rather a tit of myself. All I can say that it was 12 years ago and I was 24 and even dumber than I am now. 24-year-old me said I'd give it a chance and wait and see how it developed. Well, I tried to do that, and it was foolish. After they confirmed in 2015 that the tournament would be switched to November, I knew I'd been taken in. The human rights violations are shocking and disgraceful - but of course, South Africa, Brazil and Russia all have their problems in that arena as well - but above all the fact that the entire bid, with its promises of air-conditioned stadiums, had been a lie from the beginning (as I now believe they never had any intention of holding it in the summer at all) turned me completely off it. I swore then not to watch a minute of it. That'll be sorely tested in the coming weeks I imagine, but I'm going to hold to it. Fuck this phony WC, fuck the frauds who awarded it, fuck the emir, his entire corrupt family, and seven generations of his ancestors, fuck the lot of them.

Where's that Instagram video where they beat us 15-2 or something and Watkins was better than Wilson? Predictions for when they deleted it: a) 15 minutes in b) after Wilson scored c) after he scored again d) after their players disappeared down the tunnel, having received a well-deserved hiding that could've been 7 or 8

Or like Suella herself, she's another Goan who thinks she's white because some Portuguese guy fucked her fifteenth great-granny four hundred years ago. Ladder-puller par excellence.

He'll drag it out as long as possible, waiting for the Republicans to retake the House and disband the committee. In the event he is forced to appear, he'll plead the 5th.

Agreed completely. I said the instant it happened that it was a dive, and it turned out it wasn't, but his ridiculous overreaction actually sold the ref (and somehow VAR) on it being simulation.

Unfortunately Nasser would be laughing out of the other side of his mouth now, hijab-wearing is still not mandatory in Egypt by law but it is common practice almost everywhere. The virulent ideology of Wahhabism has sunk its barbs deep into Egypt. As a society Egypt has been pushed far to the right since his day - and he was a dictator with absolute power, so hardly a bleeding heart.

As one commentator pointed out, what was Willock supposed to have done? What course of action was he meant to have taken to avoid being pushed into the keeper by a Palace defender?

Astonishingly bad call, how can you go to the monitor and still possibly be so wrong?

After Gomez put it over that was the game. If you wanted to add time on, the whistle should've gone after our final attack. This was pure, unadulterated cheating, blatantly trying to give a "top side" a way to win the game.

An absolute cheat, nailed on from the moment 5 minutes went up. Absolutely robbed, fuck all the way off you cheating pack of pricks.

What was that free kick at the end? Too cute. Just let our best taker take it, it was from 20 yards, he'll at least put it on target. Baffling. Longstaff can't start another PL game, put Anderson on from the start. Experience my arse.