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Not even an England ‘fan’ so to speak, but this has become the biggest fallacy in world football along with Pogba being world class. The “it’s coming home” chants have 99.9% been self depreciating tongue in cheek since around 2002. It’s probably sung more by England fans since it seems to boil everybody’s piss for absolutely no reason. It’s literally an unofficial anthem and that’s it.

My eldest daughter was round tonight with the Grandkids and tells us they have to dress up as Victorian children on the 30th for something they are doing at school and have also been told to pack a Victorian lunch for them... So she tells us she does not have a clue what to give them for lunch, then promptly said " Help me out, what did you used to take back in them days??" Bloody cheek of it...

For me he's done about par, which gets overestimated because he's the first England manager I can remember who wasn't under par. But he's going the way of under par now and you also feel we had two extraordinarily good opportunities, particularly in the Euros for silverware and we didn't deliver it. He's been neither great or a disaster. Just average for me. You can't judge his time entirely against predecessors because there are so many mitigating factors. It should be always relative to the squad you have against what you're up against. For me only Spain in the Nations League and Germany in the Euros are that impressive as results, and even the latter I think needs caveating with the fact Germany were going through a bad phase themselves and we were at home. His time is definitely up though. They won't change manager before the World Cup, but they should.

Absolutely dead

Genuinely pissed myself. Couldn’t have put it any better. I mean, the famous Wigan Rugby team didn’t travel to Rome to see the Pope and if they did, I highly doubt he told them to fuck off.

Hope you like donuts.

Unfortunately change is really hard to come by against violent, totalitarian governments without the use of violence in response. Not that it'd be a likely path of success for the protestors but the other option is for things to go back to normal with people being killed by the government meaning nothing. Fucked up situation.

It's coming home really isn't deep at all, I wasn't even sure it was self deprecating (the actual lyrics within the song are) but the main bit, is it just not the same as any song the fans sing? I highly doubt for example Plymouth Argyle fans truly, hand on heart believe that they are the greatest team the world has ever seen.

So waiting for the WC to have this conversation back in the forefront !

Bizarrely given all these claims about escalation there has recently been a prisoner exchange.

Correct. He's the luckiest England manager I can remember. His luck is out though. This World Cup is going to be shocking from England, absolutely no doubt about it in my eyes.

Gareth Southgate is the first English manager to get relegated as a player, club manager, and international manager

Paint watches Gareth Southgate dry.

Never been one to do certain challenges but I think I might get into them more. I stream a bit on Twitch so might start doing some FM stuff too and challenges would be good for that.

One last dance tomorrow pairing up with Rafa in the Laver Cup. What a guy. There was a time when his dominance used to annoy me, particularly at Wimbledon as a Nadal fan, but I grew to appreciate what a great Champion he was and the way he carried himself with such style and grace. Even more so when you see Champions across other Sports who come across such assholes. Not sure I've ever heard a bad word said about Fed. Three memorable matches for me with Fed. Will always remember the day he knocked Pete Sampras out at Wimbledon as a youngster and promptly took over the Sport. The 5 set Nadal Wimbledon final he lost in '08 which is the best match I've ever seen and the 5 set Roddick final at Wimbledon where he looked beat several times and just kept coming back off the canvas. Amazing man.

The footage of the protests in Iran is crazy. Good luck to all of those brave kids, I remember my uncle telling me about the aftermath of the 2009 protests - I hope things don't go so brutally for them. The death toll from the response by the Basijis & IRGC keeps rising though - I think it's already higher than the "official" toll of 2009 (which I'm pretty sure really underrepresents how many kids they killed).

He's Australian. I can tell by the slouch hat.