Aye. I had erased him from my memory to protect myself. If I have to be serious for a moment though. He was from an era in my life where I wasnt watching Bolton. Work always comes first and I was very involved in that era. These days, I dont go seeing them as I am always working, but, even if I wasnt I dont think Id go these days. They moved the ground and various other things that have happened I didnt agree with. I still watch out for them in the results though. These days I just watch the top games, the big clubs around Europe ( on the telly ).
Probably the only country in the world where we get up off our seats and celebrate a crunching tackle as if we've scored a goal.
This is a good point - although i think for those of us supporting clubs outside the top 6 per say we always demand the things we don't have when we turn to crap. Some teams have played exciting football and its praised, then it stops working and we demand hard work, get stuck in players. If you have a team of hard gits who get stuck in but the form drops its, i want us to play good football. Spain have been as dull as us - they play like City but without the players its a dreadful watch. We expect, we demand when frankly we just want to win and if it doesn't look like happening we demand it to be done in a different way. The poster who mentioned Euro 96 is right, i was only 8 at the time and remember large parts of it but most people look back like it was the best football - i watched the games when it was televised last year ahead of the Euros as planned and we where not that great, except the Holland game and patches of the German game. Last World Cup was the same, we all got caught up in it and thought this is great, good football, won a penalty shoot out - fast forward and you realise we lost to the only good teams we played, we couldn't beat Colombia in 90 minutes who where missing their best player but the history books will show we reached a semi final. 1990 is looked back on with fondness, before my time but having seen the documentaries etc, the group stage was horrific with people wanting Robson out, late win v Belgium and lucky to beat Cameroon - again nothing spectacular but we now look back at a great run and great World Cup Lets just play what's in front of us and get behind them - if we win with this style, who are we to complain.
It surprised me how poor we were, particularly against Switzerland, Scotland and Spain. We could've easily lost a couple of those games but luck was on our side with Scotland's missed penalty and Spain's missed chances. We were very good against Holland and decent against Germany as you said though. Just shows how teams grow into tournaments and you shouldn't piss your pants after a couple of average performances. Tournament football is all about results and if we shithouse our way to the final no-one will give a damn in another 25 years time.
I like that. A colourful use of metaphors there. Also, is of course true. People only read the results. They dont remember much about the game. We are likely not going past the last 16 though. Penalties are looming again maybe.
Yep and the 1990WC was exactly the same. We scraped through the groups, getting slaughtered by fans and the media were calling for Bobby Robson to resign mid-tournament In the knockout stages we then beat Cameroon because of a couple of Lineker dives and Belgium thanks to a semi-wondergoal in the 120th minute after being outplayed by a pretty poor Belgium side who were miles away from the Belgium side of today. People will talk about the 2018WC with the same teary-eyed nostalgia in 2043 that they talk about Italia90 and Euro96 now. No one really cares how you play or who you beat in a tournament in hindsight.
Portugal played on the counter vs Germany, and actually did it pretty well for a while, but were ultimately overwhelmed. I’m worried that we’ll be similarly overwhelmed by a side who have a strong midfield. We can’t expect to win every game in the group stage, but I would like a demonstration of potential. Southgate has been manager now for 4 years and still doesn’t know his best team — hell, he doesn’t even know his best fullback pairing!
Don't think that is true at all. Cultural differences play a huge part. Most kids in Britain are taught to be functional and the quality of training even to a decent level, is limited. There is next to no focus on feints, close control, skills etc. Compare that to somewhere like Brazil where they don't only play football, but practice entire games with smaller footballs for precision, focusing almost purely on the more flair aspects of their game, and its easy to see why one would excel in those aspects compared to another. We just aren't all that knowledgeable in England compared to other big footballing nations. Almost prehistoric
But that's still the issue, by the time we finally progress our thinking to be more in line with more successful systems, it's still a decade until you see the results, and by that point we are already well off the pace again as we are incredibly slow to leave our outdated thinking behind.
I am waiting for the corner kick that goes straight back to Pickford, this will save energy on all those back passes, he can then roll it out for some more go nowhere football.
Well he’d only have conceded an average of 1 goal a game at the tournament, which is obviously an excellent achievement.
But the player like which seems to matter most apparently. Probably hasn't banned anything like ketchup or phones like previous managers. And they probably cannot find a suitable alternative.
So depressing that the FA clown feels the need to come out now before the game and say, ‘he’s our man whatever and we want to extend his contract’. Do they pay any attention to football at all? If we get spanked he’ll get murdered and they will inevitably have to replace him. It never goes well when managers get an extension before actually achieving anything.
