Burning Gold

28, 37 and 24 G/A in the last 3 seasons. But yeah all hype apart from that

If the Alexander-Arnold thing wasn't enough to prove Southgate isn't up for the job, maybe this will convince you?

I must be missing something here because the thickness of the lines makes absolutely no difference. How will this help?

It might be a tournament or so too early, but this is the best, most exciting England team I can remember. I'd put them above the 2004 side when the Beckham, Neville, Owen generation overlapped with Rooney, Terry, etc. It's just a shame we don't have a manager skilled or progressive enough to make it work. Hopefully by the time this generation is a little older we have someone better, but I can't see who that's going to be

That's a pen as well This is great. What an atmosphere this half-filled stadium is producing

I think that's a penalty? Arms extending the silhouette of the body Why's Begovic stopping him taking the ball back to the centre spot after 15 minutes?

Surely if you're Istanbul you don't even want it? They deferred it last year and I can't imagine they'd reject the chance to do again this year. Even if they have fans in the stadium, it won't be full capacity and you won't have the mass of people travelling without tickets just to be in the city and go to the bars, restaurants, etc.. If vaccine rollouts continue successfully in Europe it'll be immeasurably better for them to have it next year. I just don't understand the logic behind not moving it

Well that was a fun 48 hours wasn't it? Not sure where we go from here. Project Big Picture was largely forgotten about, but I think a few too many bridges have been burnt here. Can't speak for other clubs, but I certainly think for Liverpool fans the owners have lost a lot of goodwill. I don't think we've seen the last of this either. This was an incredibly naive attempt without even an attempt at PR, which would've carried them a long way. They won't be so stupid next time

Something's got to give here. The domestic leagues can't have these teams playing in them making vastly more money than everyone else (although that's never been a problem before), making a mockery of the league table as it pertains to European qualification, and just generally not giving a shit when it becomes clear they won't win it after 10 games and they have bigger fish to fry. On the other side, the SL clubs can't not play domestically, both for immediate financial reasons and because of their need to routinely beat lesser teams to satisfy the fans, legacy or otherwise. In fact, I think JP Morgan's loan is conditional on the clubs being able to play domestically, so they can't get off the ground without that. I also don't think the leagues really want to go ahead without their biggest clubs. I know all the fans are saying they'd happily crack on without the "big six", but the leagues make that decision and they don't really care what the fans think either. Bin it off is the best solution (and fuck the Champions League changes while we're at it), but they're in too deep. They've all made announcements, they have a website, they've resigned from various bodies, the publicly traded clubs have all sorts of obligations from that perspective. They can't go back. If I had to guess, the SL clubs make some concessions somewhere, maybe expanding the field and allowing a few more teams to qualify, maybe just giving more money to various governing bodies. Fuck knows, but it literally can't go ahead as proposed or as things stand, but it feels like it can't not go ahead either.

The ESL is where the elite players will play. You don't like it and I don't like it, but we can't pretend that the general football universe will attach more meaning to a weaker competition just because it feels nicer.

Do you think that will have any meaning with the footballing elite elsewhere? It'll be the same competitions he dreamt about winning (with Arsenal) as a kid, but they'll be totally different

Kane was an Arsenal fan as a kid, so I'm not sure what he used to dream of is particularly important to him this days. Seriously, I'm not in favour of this new league by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it's incredibly naive to think any significant number of players would pass up this opportunity just to play the odd game for their country

Yeah, I find it very hard to believe that Jose Mourinho, the most cynical man alive, has taken any kind of principled stand. He's definitely working an angle

Reckon Pochettino will come back because PSG aren't in the Super League? Wild

Right after qualifying for the European Super League. Game's gone