Dr Gloom

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.

if we get past the krauts, when's our quarter final fixture due to be played?

if we get past germany does anyone know the date of our quarter final?

shocking miss tbh. martins' shocker was typical of his one on ones when he was with us too

feeling those wheels craig. nice

old school nikes all the way for me. i'm a trainer junky, have got about 12 pairs on rotation at the moment. all about the dunks, air force ones, old schol air max 87s, 90s, 95s and 97s and jordans ... always in loud, bold colours. a few of the colours snd designs i'n wearing at the moment:

gerrard and lampard simply can't play together in the middle of a 4-4-2. t's been tried and tested. in fact, isn't that the front 6 that sven used in the last world cup?

spot on.

he looked fearess when he burst on the scene a few years back. he looks as petrified as the rest of them when they pull on englnd shirt now.

i thought he cut a across it a bit to fair - bit of a sliced shot but a great goal. agreed about gazza. he's a once in a generation player. shame he fucked up his career. none of the current lot could touch him when he was in his pomp.

held to a draw by the mighty algerians. this was all so predictable. those saying we were going to do well must be feeling a bit silly now england have reverted to type. there just isn't anything remotely fun about watching them. rooney, lampard, gerrard and heskey all awful. why the fuck is heskey playing? oh yeah, he does all that good work for the team that apparently outweighs the fact that he can't shoot, pass or control the ball. i predict a laboured victory over slovenia then a glorious failure in the knockout stages - either a pen shoot out defeat or an 'unjust' sending off, so the majority of deluded england fans can say we were cheated.

i'm for the england team but against the players

apparently it's a black thing. they've started doing it at the rugby too as it really fucks off the boers. sounds like a giant swarm of wasps. annoying. but then you would probably say the same if you got stuck next to one of the english trumpters belting out the great escape.

Really slick. oh no, the treads come under pun attack. Cap it off before it becomes crude. you're trying to drum this into something aren't you? could be a right barrel of laughs

Agreed. Thought Irelands' missus was gonna be the most dislikeable, but Cisse's wife is a bitch. Nicola T seems cock mad. So would you be if you looked like Rocky Balboa in the 15th round every time the teas not ready.

feelign good. about to jet off to la for a couple of day's work before 4 nights in vegas for a stag do