PunkStep

14 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

She’s as much a grifter as LadBaby, just a centrist one. For 40 quid a month on her patreon you can get early access to her calling a Tory a wankpuffin or a cocktrumpet!

Sounds like another Jonathan Pie

Ally and Clive for me...errr...Clive.

1 minute ago, SuperBacon said:

There is no way you didn't Google that first one

13 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Also, Mbappe becomes the 5th player to score in two separate WC finals. Can anyone name the other 4? Behind spoilers please and if you get all 4 without Google, well, you're a liar

7 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

That said, seeing how much young talent they have, they're probably going to be terrifying next Euros and WC.

Who, France? Young talent? I wouldn't quite say that beyond Tchouameni and Camavinga. Mbappe will obviously be one of the best in the world for another 10 years.

Griezmann, Giroud, Benzema, Varane and Lloris are all knocking on. Dembele, Coman  Rabiot are not young. Konate, Saliba and Kounde are all young, though.

This should have been the pinnacle of this French generation and injuries did thwart them quite a bit, but really they weren't as good as their opening match suggested. Griezmann, Mbappe and Giroud were by far their standout players, the rest were not World Cup all star team contenders. 

Yeah, cheating the Spanish government out of tax doesn't weigh as heavily on my moral compass as it probably should, so I'm going to hell no doubt. 

France were fucking awful for 80 minutes. Argentina ran the show and played some beautiful football, especially during the first half. Alexis Mac All Is Ter is going to command a massive transfer fee, especially as Brighton wisely just tied him down to a new contract. De Paul was also excellent and Di Maria turned back the clock.

That penalty woke France up like you wouldn't believe, and at 2-1 I was convinced France were winning. The momentum just swung like fuck, but they just didn't quite have the quality on the pitch (beyond Mbappe) to get it done. Thankfully. Their subs did well but if they had the quality you expect them to have (more along the lines of Coman) off the bench it could be a different story.

Lautaro Martinez is shit. Nothing during this tournament has convinced me otherwise. I reckon I could do a job at Inter given those that have succeeded there in recent years. Dembele was also rotten tonight and also for much of the tournament. 

My fucking word, I feel like Branquey during One Night In Turin. I have no right to be this emotional, but I am. I screamed and celebrated every Argentina goal as if it were Arsenal.

Fan-fucking-tastic. The greatest footballer of our lifetime (if not all-time) finally winning the World Cup in his last attempt. No other player deserves it more. And we can finally fuck off this tired debate once and for all, end of a generation. 

I don't think it works out to be much more if you get a family online subscription. I think it cost me about £25 for the year to do it? Main reason I got it is to cloud save our games (plus the SNES games), because if you have to send the Switch in for repair, you can kiss your save files goodbye. 

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

excluding <10 caps for obvious reasons)

Why for obvious reasons? Put some respect on the great Francis Jeffers' name!

Jennifer Coolidge is the fucking queen

Just finished 2nd series of The White Lotus. All the way through this series I didn't think it was quite as good as the first series, but that may well have changed after the finale. Brilliant series, can't wait to see who they bring in and where they set the third series. 

2 hours ago, air_raid said:

My only experience at old Wembley with the National team at any level is described on one site like this ;

"Schoolboy International: 7 March 1992 - England 0 Netherlands 0 - a young Phil Neville started for England."

Ooh very close to my only old Wembley experience! Also a schoolboy international, with a very young Michael Owen scoring the winner in a 1-0 win over Brazil. 1995 I think/

We also helped set the Guinness world record for most people juggling together at the same time (everyone that attended the match was part of it). Got Kris Akabusi to sign my juggling ball, which was a bonus, and met Sharon Davies. Nicer than being able to tell people you saw Michael fucking Owen score at Wembley before he was known. 

Edit: Holy shit, I just looked up the match and Ronaldinho played in that game!

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

For the interested

not in the slightest bit Raiders

I jest. I still think of Shearer as our best striker (until kane that is). Once he got through his injuries and his dry spell prior to Euro 96, it seemed all of our goals came from him. Obviously they didn't, but as a teenager that's what it seemed like. 

I was convinced that Michael Owen was going to obliterate Charlton's record until his legs stopped working and it became very clear that pace and finishing aside, he just wasn't a very good footballer. Which would be a shame if he wasn't such an unlikeable cunt.

Courageous Xavier Herrera is a tremendous name.

Good heavens, Messi for that third goal. Tied up Gvardiol in all kinds of knots for that. He's one game away from what will surely be the final big chapter of his incredible career, I hope he does it. He fucking deserves it. 

45 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

My 13yo is OBSESSED with them. Even more so than with Taylor Swift, and that's saying something.

Oddly enough, my 13yo is also big into them too. No idea if it's because of TikTok, my Dad playing them (along with The Killers) whenever he takes the grandchildren out or perhaps a bit of both- but they're her favourite band. She wants to go to see them in concert, which I think will be quite different to the last concert she went to earlier this year (Little Mix).

My 13yo niece however is obsessed with Liam Gallagher. We're talking our generation wearing bucket hats and walking like a dick levels of obsession. I don't understand how a 13yo could be so obsessed with Oasis and Liam Gallagher in 2023.

2 hours ago, gmoney said:

and it blows my tiny little mind that music can be heard off a spinning plastic disc and needle.

Blows my fucking mind. CDs, MP3s, streaming etc I can easily get my head around- but grooves in a plastic disc being scratched by a needle will never not astound me. 

Nicki Minaj's Super Bass is one of the greatest pop songs of all time and I will defend this to my grave. 

Slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye, oh!

2 minutes ago, stumobir said:

Rodgers?

A Catholic Northern Irishman, I don't see him taking the England job. 

My point is who is that (realistic) option that would definitely be better?

Yes! Or Klopp! Or the ghost of Rinus Michels. We should be aiming higher!

29 minutes ago, Jonny Vegas said:

Were England expected to beat the teams they did in the last 3 tournaments? I would say other than Germany, yes absolutely.

Including the World Cup runners up Croatia, when England beat them in the Euros last summer? The same Croatia that are one more win from a consecutive World Cup final. I don't think England should have been expected to beat them at all, especially as they lost to them at the previous major tournament. But they did. So that's two teams across three tournaments they beat when they were not expected to. That's not bad going. It's not Morocco levels of achievements, but it's a damn sight better than tournaments dating back to the Bobby Robson days at least (at the very least, I think England have been better than they were in 86-90).

Not sure why Scottish hold England in such high regard to win everything. It's quite flattering, but they're clearly not as good as you seem to think they are. And haven't been for decades.

32 minutes ago, Jonny Vegas said:

No manager could leave Bellingham out. He was a stand out and is a leader already at 19. Again I just do not believe it warrants any praise for Southgate. The lad is an absolute prodigy. He's played 2 and a half season's at a top club in Dortmund where he is now captain and already had 17 England caps. He hasn't unearthed some hidden gem.

So you say England need somebody that can appreciate, nurture and utilise the young talent at their disposal. I give you examples and your response is 'he couldn't leave him out'. Well he could, but he didn't, same with the many other young players he's played during his tenure. Nobody is saying he has unearthed a gem- he has simply appreciated, nurtured and utilised young talent. The very things you believe the England manager needs to do. So, looks like we agree on that- Southgate ticks the box. Good stuff. 

42 minutes ago, Jonny Vegas said:

If they want to try and find someone capable of leading the team past games they're not expected to win, then take a gamble.

Such as?

4 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

One of the worst lyricists in history

"And that's a good line to take this to the bridge"

Worst lyric in history. Awful.

2 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

and achieved no more or less than was expected. He's done the exact same with England

England were not expected to reach the semi finals in 2018 nor the final in 2021. They were however expected to reach the quarters this year and everyone predicted we would go out to France (the reigning world champions, one of the pre tournament favourites and let's be honest a side everyone expected to beat us).  

2 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

The stages he reached in tournaments is irrelevant, if the "luck of the draw" meant England playing the better sides earlier, they would have went out earlier

No it's not irrelevant, it's a very clear indicator of how you perform at a tournament. You can say 'England should beat Senegal etc', but you can say that about a lot of results and guess what - this is tournament football - it doesn't always go that way. Cameroon beat Brazil, South Korea beat Portugal, Morocco beat Portugal, Belgium and Spain, Tunisia beat France (albeit a much weaker side), Japan beat Spain and Germany, Saudi Arabia beat Argentina. There is no divine right for England to beat everyone, and that's the kind of mentality some of our fans need to lose.

2 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

Southgate is also in my opinion too reliant on people who have done him a good turn rather than people currently in form. 

He insisted on Stones & Maguire who struggle to get into their club sides and have less appearances this season between them than Fikayo Tomori has for an AC Milan side who won Serie A last season with him receiving rave reviews, sit 2nd in Serie A currently only behind a fantastic Napoli side and recently qualified from their Champions League group. He wasn't even in the 23.

For me starting Pickford who's not done well at Everton for about 3 years and has been fighting relegation for the last 2, ahead of Ramsdale who's been earning plaudits at a rejuvinated Arsenal side who are top of the league was also a silly decision.

Prior to this tournament I would agree on one of the above points (Maguire), but hasn't Southgate once again just proved everybody wrong in this regard? Maguire has been brilliant and I fail to see how we would have been better if somebody else were in his place. Therefore Tomori would have been an unused squad player. I would have picked him over Coady, but then again we're really going down to very small decisions that had no overall bearing of the team's performance here. Maguire and Stones were trusted once again as part of a defence and GK that know each other very well at international level (Walker, Trippier, Shaw, Pickford) and they delivered.

As an Arsenal fan, I'd have loved to see Ramsdale but Pickford has always been good for England and was the best choice here. Also, he's the single biggest reason (ahead of Richarlison) why Everton weren't relegated last season, he's been their best player for more than a year now. It was a no-brainer for me.

2 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

England have the most promising crop of youth talent on their hands arguably for the last 20 years and they need a manager who is going to appreciate, nurture and utilise that.

How has he not done that? He has just played a 19yo for 5 consecutive matches at the World Cup. He has integrated so many young players into the squad and managed them very well, especially during difficult times. Just ask Saka. He gave Sancho plenty of caps before his form dipped and other young players moved ahead of him. At the Euros, England had the youngest squad and during this World Cup I believe England had the 7th youngest squad, or something like that.

2 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

Eddie Howe would be the first name that I'd put forward.

Yes but that's not realistic though, is it? Howe is doing wonders with a team that are on the verge of breaking the 'big six' stronghold and is pushing for Champions League football. He is being paid very handsomely by a state-funded club. He isn't going to take the England job, no chance. Given what Southgate has built here with the squad he has and the relationships he clearly has with them, I don't know who England could REALISTICALLY (people really need to take note of this word) replace him with that would definitely achieve more. A team that were a penalty shootout away from Euros glory and a couple of decisions (in a game against the World Champions where they were the better team) away from a World Cup semi final VS Morocco.

Perhaps there is a better option out there, but there isn't a glaringly obvious option that I can see that can guarantee improvement. And you take the relationship Southgate has with his players on a whim for the sake of just having a change, and to me you risk England going completely backwards.

edit: @garynysmon spot on in your post. Love the mention of Bora, the absolute lunatic!