Anne Frank = “made a meal of it”

Nelson Mandela = “moaner who should have got on with it”

Tavares to Lazio looks done for 9m euros on an obligation to buy after a 1 year loan - plus a 20% sell on clause

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-arse ... /verein/11

This is a decent reference point for lists and costs of transfers but it doesn't account for everything. Leno's sale for example is down as just 3.6m euros, but we know we received an extra £2m twice over for the 2 seasons Fulham stayed in the prem and will likely get another £1m based on his appearances for them. So £3m turns in to £8m

Good point. That was a good bunch of players,

Problem with the Sven side was that there were no players in it that were fast and could take players on. Every decent team has to have pacy wide players to stretch the opposition and it just didn’t have that. Trevor Sinclair was the closest they had. I would say the current Southgate squad has the best combination of attributes required in the squad to be successful. The only quality the squad seems to miss is a slight lack of distribution in midfield.

I think there should be further context. Is the 2024 Germany, France and Italy teams comparable to the 2004 ones? Possibly Netherlands and Spain.

France 2004: Barthez, Gallas, Thuram, Sagnol, Dessaily, Zidane, Pires, Makelele, Vieira, Henry, Trezeguet.
Germany 2004: Kahn, Lahm, Worns, Schweinsteiger, Ballack, Frings, Klose, Podolski
Italy 2004: Buffon, Cannavaro, Zambrotta, Nesta, Gattuso, Camornesi, Pirlo, Zanetti, Del Piero, Vieri, Totto
Netherlands were fairly loaded as well, van der Sar, Stam, de Boer, Cocu, Sneijder, Overmars, Robben, Seedorf, Davids, RVN, Kluivert, Spain; Cassilas, Puyol, Baraja, Alonso, Xavi, Morientes, Torres, Raul

Good luck on doing well against them.

Onana to Villa for £50m and a sell on clause. We had been linked but whilst Onana is a very effective player I think we need a midfield profile of an elite passer rather than Onana right now

Rich, any additional info on the lad?



fingers crossed

https://x.com/david_ornstein/status/181 ... -j6VVZXEoA

New youth gk to sign

You’d think neither Raya or Ramsdale will go on the US tour due to being involved late in the euros so there is a chance for some
Young GK’s to come in. Could see up to 5 gk sign this summer including Raya

Not heard of this lad at all.

There is a conserved effort to put more money in to competing for kids at this level

Yes, we have regularly had some seriously good men since our only trophy win in 1966, and from time to time managers like Robson and Venables have taken them deep into competitions. In my estimation Southgate has not been especially blessed with overwhelmingly talented players, but he does get a tune out of them. More Elgar than Mozart, but listenable all the same.

Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ and ‘Charmed’ star, dead at 53

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/14/ente ... index.html

Not sure what that dumb post was about but hey it's Sunday.

I didn't think he pulled up any trees at this Euros. Don't see what the fuss is about.

He seems like a Rice type box to box player. If we didn’t have rice maybe someone we might be higher on him, but I agree with all the people saying we could do with a Jorginho/Partey type player in there.

Whenever Cucarella has come up against Saka recently, his approach has been to kick him. It’s worked pretty well because he’s been allowed to. Be interesting tonight.

Still a stalemate in the final

Oops, Williams put Spain 1-0 up

Rice struggling a bit.

About time, Kane substituted

Palmer equalises

Great strike. Saka has been very effective.

It would be such a great story should Saka score the winning penalty, if it got to that

Oh no, Spain goes ahead.

Hold on a minute, could be offside. Think it is offside. Alas, it is not

Spain deserved it though

England got further than I thought they would. I thought Netherlands or even Swiss would have done them in. Purely down to the manager. And a lesser extent the English press is a negative to any English side. Builds them up as high as they can to tear them down.

I thought Spain was going to win it early on. The road to the final hardened them because they had to go through so many tough sides.

England players play in the best league in the world. They play skilful quality possession/passing/attacking football week in, week out.

Southgate doesn’t understand that. He isn’t comfortable with those tactics. He has taken us back 20 years.

Southgate is a nice bloke but that’s not enough.

Kane simply wasn’t fit at all. Missed the last bundesliga games. It was obvious. England played their best football when he was off the pitch.

I thought walker looked past it today. Feels like there needs to be a refresh with several of Southgate’s favourites like Trippier and others ditched.

Feel a bit sorry for Declan. He’s getting major stick but it feels like he practically has to run the midfield in his own with players who don’t have his mindset and understanding. He’s going to be a scapegoat

Still think the real problem is that England don’t have a ball playing midfielder. There isn’t a scholes or Gerrard type who has slick distribution. We do seem to have the right blend of skills but missing a couple of ingredients.

Yes. He comes across as a thoroughly decent man, but has you playing hugely conservative football. England had an incredibly lucky draw through this tournament and only ever lit it up for 30 minutes against Holland. They played so much long ball stuff tonight, it was quite dismal.

It looks like Rice is going to be the scapegoat and that's really unfair (even if I wish he'd stuck with Ireland).

Passing was a bit slow but he was huge on the defensive side. How he can be the scapegoat when Kane literally walked around for 70 minutes and has been poor throughout the tournament is beyond me.

Yes there are heaps of critics having a chop at Rice. They are too scared to mention that they picked a captain who was not worthy of a place in the starting 11.

The English league is NASCAR. When I first saw the league it was fast, and big. The clubs use speed, size, bully their way to the finish. It's how the English clubs won European cups in the '70s and early 80s and I think would have won more in the '80s were it not for being banned.

Southgate has Formula One, much better skill wise than before. So, he's got a fast, skillful car and drives it like a cabbie. Defensive driving. Not wanting to take chances for fear of losing their license.

Agreed, the ball playing midfielder who can sit in front of the defence and control the game and dictate the tempo, England don’t have one, whilst Spain had probably at least 4 (Rodri, Ruiz, Merino, Zubimendi) Spain churn this type of player for fun. They pass and move, play forward, play quickly and play 1 or 2 touch all game. England don’t have that player, haven’t had that player for 40 years really. Gerrard wasn’t that, Scholes maybe later in his career but it was a different era. Carrick might have been the closest. I can’t see any of that type of playing coming through either.

England’s problem is keeping the ball. The best teams keep the ball, squeeze the pitch with your defence on the halfway line and press high. If you’re missing key pieces of that tactic you just can’t do it, England have an abundance of attacking mids both central and wide, but lack a passer in the middle of the pitch, they also lack technical defenders, full backs who feel comfortable in midfield and for this tournament a striker who offered anything in the build up.

Kane, walker and trippier - should be their last tournaments. Move Southgate on and get Ben White in to the set up, probably as a ball playing CB as we lack a lot more there than at RB. Get Trent in the side as a right back. But we still have to find those CM passers. Rice and Mainoo are both better as an 8

Nico Williams looks like he’ll end up at Barcelona, shame because his release clause and ability makes him this summers must have signing

Spain were the best and most entertaining side and deservedly won the competition.

England were what they have been all tournament, pretty unremarkable bar the odd moments.

Gareth Southgate's record for England is incredible, two euro finals and a WC semi. However, if you look a little deeper at the routes we've had during those tournaments, who we've had to play in order to progress, you could only conclude that he is perhaps the most fortunate international manager ever.


We got to a WC semi after finishing 2nd in our group to Belgium, which inexplicably opened up one of the easiest routes to a semi final ever. Columbia, Sweden and then Croatia in the semi.

Imagine getting to a WC semi without having to play any of Brazil, Argentina, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany etc. That feels unprecedented in the modern era.


We got to a Euro final against Italy having played Germany, Ukraine and Denmark in the knockout phase.


We got to a Euro final against Spain having played Slovakia, Switzerland and the Netherlands after all the heavy hitters ended up in the other side of the draw .


By contrast, Spain played Georgia, Germany and France (the latter being two of the big favorites for the competition). They also had Italy in their group.


Now, you can only beat who is put in front of you and we have so in that respect you cannot question Southgate's record but it is obvious that in terms of routes to finals and semi finals we have been very, very lucky with the way things have worked out for us.

I don’t agree. But it seems many are…


Van der Vaart: "€100M for Declan Rice. What does he do? He comes to collect a ball only to pass it back to John Stones. He is useless. If you are truly worth €100M, then you should be able to play a ball forward."

Really if the fluency of our play is being called out then mainoo, Foden and Bellingham should be getting called out not Rice who we know what he is and isn’t

I thought Pickford, Guehi, stones, Saka, mainoo and Rice were the only ones involved heavily who can really come away with any credit for how they played throughout. Southgate was crackers to not identify we only played decent football after Kane had been subbed off.

I don’t understand Bellingham either. He seems to have inherited the Bryan Robson/David Platt thing where he does *%^@ all for 90 minutes swanning around and only wants to work and come alive around the penalty area. I genuinely think Rice is taking pelters because how he performed