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Last minute equaliser against conference league Hartlepool today. Something tells me they aren't going to walk league 1

I think they gave up on that when they appointed Alex McLeish.

Struggling to find any Wearside connections for Trippier, I’ll be honest. No idea why essembee hates him

CT, we’ve just had a week of rioting, shots fired at police, plastic bullets being used in the streets, a bomb thrown at Gerry Adams’ house, 75 petrol bombs thrown in one night and two two IEDs at police and this is just a standard July. Don’t dismiss the threat of violence.

Let’s not forget, gents, that we could have been discussing the fucking joke of a tournament we’d have had under Hippo Heed.

Thats just the post beating 3 shite teams hype. You'll think he's shit again soon

Players generally improve I disagree that it’s a myth. Barkley is just injury prone so would struggle to improve, Sterling has improved imo even at International level but I’m happy to agree to disagree on that one. It’s a squad where we had players who got more caps during the tournament than they had before it. Which, as I’ve said, have shown they are better than all previous England teams since at least 2004. Southgate is learning as well, this was the blokes first tournament, I’m not willing to just write the bloke off because he made some decisions I disagree with. Capello was a far better manager on paper but he was a fucking joke of an England manager, if we chuck in Southgate at the start of his project we’re back to having no identity and no plan. At the moment we have an identity to build on, we were lacking in some key areas but the talent is in the youth and they’re all playing a similar system to the side which was at the World Cup so it’s creating a potential pipeline. Southgate deserves a lot of credit for that imo. Also when saying those sides look forward to their youth talents improve in 4 years, those are the lads England have been brushing aside in the majority of youth tournaments? I know you acknowledge that point later but it sort of makes the point about those teams moot imo. Of course there is always the risk they won’t come through, or that lads like Foden and Sancho won’t get games but what’s the point in being negative about it? Of course those sides have more quality, all of them (with the exception of Belgium) have had more quality than us for most of football history. You can make pretty much the same point regarding Mbappe kicking on as you can about the England players improving, you’re only one bad injury away from being half the player you were. In 4 years Rashford could improve a lot, look at Kane now compared to his level at the previous World Cup. My main point is really that there are positives to this World Cup, we’re a country that two years ago lost to Iceland, four years ago were put out at the group stage by Costa Rica. I just don’t see the point in scratching around for negatives, as ewerk says we may as well pack in watching England if we can’t enjoy that World Cup.

May as well pack it all in now, lads.

Third place game and semi final put this England team into perspective. We only made the semi final because of the easy draw. Any knockout game against an actual contender would have seen us leave.

You’d think the sweaties would look at what a tiny country like Croatia had achieved and think that maybe one day they too could qualify for a tournament

Well that was a waste of everyone’s time.

This is spot on. Some of these lads have 9 caps, 6 of which came at this tournament. This system is new to them and they’ve took to it well. The “only beat weak sides” argument doesn’t wash with me either, in the past 8 years I’ve seen England struggle like fuck against sides like Iceland, Algeria, Costa Rica, etc so I’m happy to see us just put sides like that to bed with comfortable wins. We also have a lot of talent coming through the system who are all playing in this same sort of style. It’s about as positive as I’ve ever been about England so I’m going to enjoy it. On that note, I can take a bit of piss taking as much as the next bloke but the Scots online are getting tedious as fuck, they keep acting like we have absolutely no right to have taken any enjoyment or pride from getting to a Semi Final and that the “it’s coming home” craic was completely serious. They can bore off tbh, it also wasn’t absurd to start believing either as if you make it to a semi final you definitely have a reason to think you’re in with a chance. The quality and experience has told again here but I’m just glad to finally have an England side I give a fuck about watching. It’s also always worth pointing out that as decent as Young has been we’d have a better player there in Luke Shaw if Mourinho hadn’t made it his personal mission to bully the lad out of football.

Not sure what some people expect tbh. England are a young side without much creativity in the middle of park trying to play a possession game (quite rightly I think). They’ve shown great team spirit, an ability to work to a game plan and performed way above expectation despite their obvious limitations. They weren’t far off making it to the final. If you can’t take the positives out of that you might as well stop watching football. Or become obsessed with Sunderland, which equates to the same thing

Fuck off you tedious cunt

Wonder what the crack is with Hayden but I hope him and his family are alright since he seems like a good kid. Could be a canny utility player as well so I wonder if a loan out could be on the cards so we don't lose him. Providing he's playing at a good level.

It’s alreet, Noelie would have brought him back on again if it had gone to pens

The thing with this bollocks from Trump on trade - he's complaining the US gets a bad deal from the EU. Which means by extension the EU must get a 'good' deal on trade. So we're swapping trading relationship which favours us, for one that won't, as far as the US is concerned. It's fucking ludicrous.

Watch the full clip, it just gets better and better