RandoEFC

He should do well under Emery. He only showed flashes at Everton because his main strengths are ball retention and breaking the lines (Dyche's setup sees us largely bypass the midfield when we have the ball) and recovery tackles (Dyche set the team up to defend deep meaning the midfield wouldn't be turned very often). A weird case of a £50m+ player being not really needed in a bottom half team.

Southgate has been able to bring good vibes and a sense of purpose to players who had lost their way, and made the England team more likeable to the public. He led the international team to the best results most current players had experienced in the England team when they got to the World Cup semi finals and that run instilled in them a sense of momentum, an upward trajectory, and the experience of actually doing quite well in a tournament. This all didn't exist under previous managers. Southgate has taken England from an international side which had among the best selection of individual talent but were prone to getting knocked out by an "inferior" opponent and had absolutely no hope of beating anyone of actual quality, to an international side which has among the best selection of individual talent that can now be relied upon not to get knocked out by an "inferior" opponent and has next to no hope of beating anyone of actual quality. It's a success overall but it isn't a resounding success. The first World Cup was really good and so were some of the Nations League performances soon after. Since, England have made two Euro finals on account of having kind runs and their new-found ability to avoid losing to teams they should really be beating. You could actually argue that about the World Cup 2018 performance as well. World Cup 2022 they were actually more convincing in the early fixtures but still got knocked out as soon as they met a proper heavyweight. The only "elite" nations England have beaten in a major tournament under Southgate are Germany (with home advantage) and Netherlands in this tournament who some people would argue are just short of being classed as elite. I don't want to slate Southgate's tenure overall but I do think this is the natural time to move on. England might have just reached a Final but the performances look to be in a state of decline. He's done a good job to a point but I don't think he's a good enough manager to take the team any further. Both of those judgements can be true at the same time. At the end of the day, if you look at the players he has access to relative to his competition on the international stage, getting to the last four of most tournaments he's managed is meeting expectations rather than exceeding them and it's taken some luck to achieve that. Enough time has passed now that being better than what Capello and Hodgson served up in their frankly awful tenures as England manager should no longer be treated as the bar an England manager needs to clear. If you look around, there aren't many, if any, teams that can claim to be able to field a better international squad than England so you have to have some ambition and look to see who else is out there to help them make that final step. You never know when you'll get a dud generation of players and be out of contention for a decade.

No point playing Alexander-Arnold in this England team. You can be the best crosser in the world but it's useless putting a good ball into the box because Kane will be halfway between the centre circle and the edge of the box jogging vacantly forward rather than getting on the end of anything.

I've been reading how this shooter wasn't allowed into the rifling club at his high school because he was such a bad shot or something. My takeaway here is, what the fuck is a country that has rifling ranges in high schools? Fucking insane.

Watched it out so don't know what the prevailing narratives and opinions are but my take on the game is as follows. Both teams and the game started off pretty well but then fizzled out into a bit of a non-event of a first half. Spain looked more like they had a clue what they were doing when they carried the ball into the attacking third but didn't really create anything. Second half, Spain were pretty much in control for most of it, didn't sit on their lead and could easily have killed it off with a second. Instead another moment of quality from England draws it level. Again I was left thinking how lucky this manager is. Based on the moments England players have produced to keep them in the tournament, they probably could have got this far with Rishi Sunak managing them. Spain obviously reestablished themselves after England equalised and went on to take a deserved win. Spain were the best team in the opening set of fixtures and remained so throughout. Germany were the only ones who got close and really that quarter final between them should have been the final. I don't think I've ever seen so many "big" countries perform so poorly at a major tournament. England, France, Italy, Portugal and Belgium were all pretty shite. Netherlands had their moments but were disappointing overall too. Spain thoroughly deserve the trophy as the only team who looked like they were really used to playing as a cohesive unit and not just "keeping it tight" and hoping their star players produce a moment to decide the game. That takes me on to England. The performance against the Netherlands was the only one that probably met expectations overall. The rest was pretty much crap performances bailed out by an individual moment of quality. That's usually enough to get you to a quarter final or a semi final before you get found out. On this occasion, thanks to a combination of how the draw panned out and a lack of actually good teams to get drawn against, it got England to the final before their luck ran out. You won't see another final with the performance England served up in the tournament overall. I think this might be the worst possible outcome for the team to be honest because it leaves them without a trophy again, but it's enough to see Southgate get given World Cup 2026 as well and he's just a bad manager. Why is he a bad manager? We've just spent the entire tournament watching Kane, Foden and Bellingham look painfully ineffective compared to what we all know they're capable of. He changed the entire approach mid-tournament. I don't think any England player can come out of that tournament rated higher than a 7/10 and I don't think you could even go that high with any of the attacking players. You can't be given that much talent and not find a way of playing that gets near the best out of at least a couple of them. Overall, I'm actually glad that tournament is over now. Group stages were class. The knockouts went on too long and the majority of those games were pretty turgid. Made me look forward to having the domestic season back at least.

Hopefully that's the last we see of Djokovic in grand slam finals. One of the most unlikeable elite tennis players I can remember.

I was about to make a reply but I'm not bothering now. I have better things to do with my Sunday. When people are posting conspiracy theories and in the next breath accusing people with mild suspicions of being conspiracy theorists I'm afraid I'm just going to have to say believe what you want and have a nice day.

I assume the people who were very upset about the "it might have been staged knowing Trump" conspiracy theory will be equally upset about this sentence.

The England fans who behave like that at tournaments are the same people who march into London behind the likes of Tommy Robinson every so often shouting unintelligible tripe into Sky News cameras about how they're standing against "forunnuhs" coming to "Bri-Un" and behaving in ways that the locals apparently don't like. Sadly they don't know what irony means.

Republicans crying now about polarisation leading to violence is through the looking glass stuff. Your guy launched a radicalised meat shield at the government when he didn't like losing the election lads. As many others have said, it's a shame that the people calling this a tragedy for the country are unable to find the same energy when these weapons are pointed at children or school teachers.

I'm sorry if this for some reason offends anyone but even with the deaths reported that only reduces my suspicion that it was staged rather than eliminating it. Trump and the people around him are deeply malicious actors. I wouldn't call it likely but I wouldn't rule out the calculation that if one or two people actually died during this, then they were quite happy for that to make it more convincing. This is the guy that sent a mob of his followers to attack the government buildings in a riot that ended up with fatalities on both sides. This guy's track record is unbelievable in the worst way. I genuinely think anyone who dismisses the possibility that this was a set-up out of hand is just as naive as anyone who is absolutely convinced it was a set-up even after reports of the fatalities. The most likely truth is that it was genuine but you can't rule anything out when it comes to these people.

Not just me then...

People getting outraged about us calling it staged when all of us said we might be wrong but that was our initial reaction when all we had to go off was a short clip. Nothing had come out about any fatalities at that point. Chill out ffs.

Sounds like about 6 shots fired in this video. Trump reportedly left with a bloody ear holding his fist in the air. My genuine early feeling is that this is staged. Might be wrong but it can't be easy getting a gun within that vicinity of Donald Trump and if someone wanted him shot then you wouldn't go to that effort and risk if you didn't know you were getting to make the shot. Maybe I've just been watching too much of The Boys...

£70m is the club's valuation. They'd probably sell for a nicely structured deal at that price. Man Utd are the only club that have entered talks though and their latest offer of £45m was rejected out of hand and laughed out of the room. I think he'll go next summer for £70m to a better team than Man Utd when one of them needs a centre back. Might even get a bit more if he has a standout season.

I don't think Branthwaite will leave this summer unless someone makes a once in a lifetime bid for him. We probably want a centre back and certainly a winger. A striker as well if Calvert-Lewin leaves.

I was hoping we'd get a bit more for him. Maybe Villa said we'll give you an extra £5m for Dobbin if you knock off £5m from Onana's fee when he leaves the Euros. Not overly fussed anyway. He's a valuable player who's worth more to other clubs than to us because he doesn't really work in a Dyche midfield and couldn't nail down a place in the team ahead of Garner, Gueye and Doucoure. Good for all parties to move on.

I'm enjoying it. I think the cast do a good job and I enjoyed the battle scenes at the end of the previous episode. I do agree that it doesn't quite hit the heights of the first half of Game of Thrones where the audience and their attention span were trusted to value suspense and intrigue, and that a few "junk food TV" elements remain but I still find it solid television and a big improvement on the dumpster fire of late Game of Thrones.

Biden has just quite rightly done a tweet asking would you rather have me mixing up names when it comes to Putin or Trump who calls Putin brilliant?

Trump also said something about one of his sons having an unbelievably great wife a few days ago. The son in question is unmarried.

It looked like Biden was making a decent recovery from that debate disaster but at NATO overnight I see that he's referred to Kamala Harris as "Vice President Trump" and introduced Zelensky on stage as "President Putin" so that's all just great.

Unserious bellends taking less than a week to start falling out after getting their first seats in parliament.

Djokovic being a huge cunt earlier this week and having a go at the crowd saying things like "you can't touch me" because they were chanting "Ruuuuuune" for Holger Rune and he decided to be a professional victim about it and make out that he was being booed. He's spent a lot of his career with a chip on his shoulder because Federer and Nadal were adored everywhere they went and he never had that love off the crowds. It's because people can tell he's just not as humble and warm as those two, which is fine if that's his personality, but there's no need for him to be such a dick about it.

Spain 3-1 England

Yeah I wasn't really having a go at you and that was definitely a fair observation going back 4-5 years but it still gets me seeing pundits make comments like "Pickford's never let England down", "he's always been good for England", "the way he's performed for England". The lad deserves to just have his qualities acknowledged without this perpetual implication that he's an average player at club level who just plays out of his skin when it comes to his country.