i dont know why i f@cking bother...

thats karma. england score within 10 seconds of posting to make me look silly

hehe

what a great tactical astute manager we have

Nothing wrong with the OP!  England have been awful, despite the goal

its like to beat a man they have to hope that 5 ricochets off legs and various body parts go their way to emerge 5 yards further forward with the ball. if said does not happen then belgium just come away with the ball.

And yet we're still comfortably beating Belgium, who a lot on here were c*cksucking

great post :) England have never been an exciting team, be glad you have a manager who will now use what he has at his to get a WINNING team... as a Scot I am actually hating the fact Hodgson is in charge as it smacks of a under the radar (Chelsea) tourney winning team

to be honest mate i would rather us play exciting football and win that way than bore our way to winning something. football should be entertaining imo

We haven't got the players to play exciting football at International level.  We're not Brazil!

boy i thaught we were dire to watch and we r but feck me yous r woeful

this game has been all Belguim -apart from Defoe shot against post - last 20 mins I have watched

England 'a tough nut to crack' - don't think so

'If Germany had won 1-0 we'd call them World class' : Adrible Chiles

So which exciting players would you bring in to liven it up, Munter?

you dont have to be brazil to play exciting football, just got to play as a team with the right formation and tactics. venables had it right in '96, we played to our strengths which at the time was a 3-5-2 formation. we are too stuck in our ways with the boring 4-4-2.

no idea at all. i am very happy to see scrappy 1-0's once the tourney begins

maybe we don't have exciting players - it's a team thing. we could have an exciting team perhaps. but, as i say, boring 1-0's will be fine if it wins us a tournament

I'm happy enough with ugly 1-0s in the Euros, doesn't make it any easier to watch though.  Rooney will get sent off every other game ploughing a lone furrow up front however.

point is, Belguim had loads of good chances and I don't think you'd even get 'loads of good chances' against a really good team.  (I am an England supporter)

Tougher games than Norway and Belgians the Euros maybe i think

very much agreed

Erogenous, during Euro 96 we had a very tough defensive line, some pretty decent finishers, and some exciting and effective attacking midfielders. The players we have to pick from today are mostly fairly lacklustre. And our defenders aren't good enough to hold out strong sides unless they get strong back up from the midfield.

Plus, we had home advantage in 96, and we got the luck of one or two slightly fortunate decisions.

Like all home games

Heh????

personally i think it was more the fact that we played as a team and everyone knew their role and was happy playing there. we have messed up countless amounts of times in recent years playing players out of position and trying to get gerrard and lampard playing together well, i personally think they would have played well together in a different formation and different tactics but we are too stuck in our ways.

i dont wana be stuck at these euros hoping the opposition dont score??!! i want us to be outscoring them, not conceding a goal then having the feeling that we cant get back into the game. 

i cant really recall what decisions we were fortunate with in '96?? i just know that in 96 if the opposition scored i would have full faith in us being able to score another

Euro 96 England played all home games i would think that helped a little

that was truly awful to watch

engerland in anti-football shock

England World Ranking - 7
Belgium World Ranking - 44

England should be confident of beating Belgium at home. Didn't look much like that to me, and I backed England.

Well I did say that in my post TheChaser. 'Home advantage in 96'.

I had layed England and feel a bit hard done by

Erogenous, I think you're severely underestimating that 96 squad if you think today's England players are of the same quality versus the opposition. Gazza alone was a sensational player to have pulling the strings on the big occasion. The strikers were good, and we had very decent pace down the wings. And all that on top of a great set of defenders. And the advantage of playing at home was massive.

As regards the fortunate decisions, we got away with a lot when we played Spain. Several disallowed goals and solid penalty shouts for them turned down. Lots of Spanish supporters were bitter about that result for years after. You obviously don't hear it mentioned much in England though!

N Ireland play exciting football.

How are they doing

yes, they are not of the same quality. but that doesnt mean that we cant play exciting attacking football! and the spain game is the only game where i cant really remember much about ... being serious actually!

We were playing quite exciting football against Germany, at the time that Lampard's goal got disallowed. How did that go!?

Strangely enough, I can't remember much about the Spain game either, but I know a lot of Spaniards were very bitter about it! (I remember more about the atmosphere than the game itself!!)   I think in England we just gave a sigh of relief that we squeezed through it and then collectively erased it from our footballing sub-conscience!!

they destroyed us. fair and square. just got to hold your hands up when that happens.

we probably did! think it was the shock of us actually winning on penalties!!

The Germany performance was partly down to naivety. We left gaping holes in the centre of the midfield, and our defence was idiotically managed and received no support whatsoever from the midfielders.  The Germans were very good, and they may well have still smacked us had we been better organised, but we made it very easy for them.   I hate these gung-ho English sides that just get ripped to shreds by the more intelligent foreign opposition.

i think tbf the first 2 german goals in the first 20 minutes were both from shambolic defending werent they. we were done for after that. dont know whether a gung ho approach was to blame there. the holes in our midfield was however a tactical disaster that i would firmly pin on the manager.

Zee Germans tore Argentina apart also.No one was outscoring Argie bar Germany imo

But the Argies were utterly bonkers. You can't use them as a test of anything!!

I seriously believe England will get 2 points max

I don't know if it helps but 'no one' are two separate words. 'Noone' is just 'noon' with an 'e' on the end.

Humour me. How would that help anyone?

did anyone actually write "noone"?

Ah the op did Mr Bond i thought he was referring to me.

word fascist

www.statsthebet.co.uk

A small piece of education is a good start to having a good England team.

'Get into space so that your team-mate can pass to you, you honker!' might be important education for our footballers.

The difference between no one and noone (or, indeed, no-one)?  Erm... Nah!

I think you miss my point.

A small amount of education would not "get my hopes up thinking they are going to play well and its going to be an exciting game".

England aren't very good. I'm not sure why that still surprises people

What people seem to have overlooked is Roy has only had the job for 2 weeks,so therefore he hasn't had enough time to form a team capable of winning this tournament.
I think ,therefore,having realised this he is thinking more towards the World Cup in 2014,which is why he is picking people like Wellbeck,Oxlade-Chamberlain,Henderson and Kelly.Even if they dont get a game they'll benefit from the experience of being in a tournament squad.

They wouldn't benefit from the experience of being in a tournament squad that played negative football all the way through and still got eliminated at the group stage. Indeed, that experience might scar them for the rest of their international careers.

And anyway, the idea of getting 'experience' is a double-edged sword. In some ways it's better to go into your first 'personally significant' tournament not really knowing what it's going to feel like. If you can remember what it felt like the last time, your mind can haunt you in the run-up with vivid and horribly realistic images that ratchet up the tension you're feeling. But if you don't really know what it's going to feel like, you're probably not going to be paying much attention to anything your mind can conjure up, since you'll know it's based on nothing.

Not a great lover of ingerlund
however
there are 2 or maybe 3 very good teams in the euros
(one doesnt need to mention them does one?)
the rest are of varying degrees of average including our island heroes
a question of form and confidence for roys boys
They seem to be in 'a good place' at the mo