RandoEFC

Nobody has better odds to win today than 2/1. Always good to go into a race without it being a case of "if nobody gets Max on the first lap then it's race over" although to be fair, even that wasn't true in Miami or Austria where he did get pole.

Spain 1-0 France Netherlands 1-1 England

Good penalties from England across the board, fair play. Pickford might have saved one but he needs some ADHD tablets if there's another shootout. He was playing mind games but it's kinda pointless if you end up committing to a dive before the penalty is taken which he did on two of the others. Not to go on about it, but France and England making it to the semis with their performances is absolutely vile. Knowing Southgate's luck, Turkey will go and beat Netherlands now.

Southgate injuring Kane might be the best piece of management he's done all tournament. Not sure about the timing of it right before the shootout though. Might actually have been useful.

England are on a run of four games against Denmark, Slovenia, Slovakia and Switzerland without winning any in 90 minutes. Brilliant players put together to make a bang average team yet they may yet make the semi final...

How does Southgate keep getting away with this?

Someone I listened to on a podcast somewhere said that Switzerland are the one team who never over or underperform in a tournament. Always through the groups but never in the semi-finals. I thought that's so true. They have beaten Italy though so maybe they've changed their ways this time.

One of the benefits of having a wide attacker that cuts inside is to create space for an overlap from behind but there isn't anyone behind in this instance. Having wrong-footed players in both positions in a formation where they're the only two players who can provide any width just guarantees you won't have any width. I didn't whinge straight away because I thought the plan might be for them to alternate sides during the game, but no, England are genuinely just going for the "let's see if we get a lucky bounce through the crowded centre of the pitch or just hope someone scores a screamer" tactical approach...

What on earth is the thinking behind playing a left footer at right wing back and a right footer on the other side?

Labour have only been in power two days and already British drivers are locking out the top three at Silverstone . Mercedes look like they're properly back in the mix though. With no big regulation change until 2026 we could be about to see a year and a half long golden age of competitive F1. Just need Ferrari to get back amongst it. Hopefully nobody brings a beast car out of the box next year because it could be some championship if things are like this next year.

Southgate is playing wing backs as was rumoured. Absolutely beyond me though that he'll shoehorn Alexander-Arnold into midfield but won't play him at right wing back ahead of Trippier.

It's got to the point now where I don't see how anyone is gaining from the ongoing Perez situation. It's not even like he's getting to enjoy podium finishes or inherited wins. His reputation as a driver is just taking a battering every weekend while Red Bull are likely to blow the Constructors' Championship. The only benefit is that they can have a clear lead driver but unless they could put pretty much anyone in there without disrupting Max at the moment. Leclerc is out in Q2. He's been a ghost since winning Monaco. Big performances from Aston Martin and Williams. Damage for Verstappen may rule him out of competing for pole here.

France have been pretty turgid all tournament and wouldn't have been missed. Portugal also deserve to get binned out though because they've employed a manager who has just pandered to an expired and goalless Ronaldo for the entire tournament wasting an otherwise talented and exciting side that could have been up there with Spain as one of the most impressive sides. I might cry if Spain don't beat France in the semi-final. There's been some great entertainment throughout this tournament but a lot of the supposed best teams have served up some real anti-football, especially in the knockout matches.

Thought Spain edged this and continue to look the best team at the tournament overall.

Wales didn't return a single Tory MP either .

People who have moved from Conservative to Reform (at least some) are the type who believe that "dealing with immigration" is something that can just easily be done overnight when in actual fact it's an incredibly complicated issue for the UK due to geography, politics and commitment to international law. A lot of these people think that the Conservatives have proved that they "won't" deal with it whereas Reform have never had power and so that accusation can't be levelled at them. In actual fact, the Conservatives simply couldn't deal with immigration in the way these people wanted within the restraints that exist in our democracy. Farage could be made PM tomorrow and have all 650 seats in Parliament and you still wouldn't see him achieve net zero migration or whatever it is these people want in a full term. The left actually have better solutions to managing immigration then the right (creating safe routes, spending more money on processing migrants and catching people traffickers, having a closer relationship with France/Europe, actually just welcoming more immigration to help staff the NHS and care services) but unfortunately Labour are still too frightened that the media and political landscape will ruin them for it that they aren't making the a strong case for any of these approaches. One thing is for sure, the Rwanda scheme is absolutely bat shit crazy on a moral, practical and economic level.

We have a winner! Everyone was able to pick a team to progress to the Quarter Finals, either Spain, England or Portugal, so we moved onto the Anytime Goalscorer phase of the tie breaker. With the others backing Kylian Mbappe or Cristiano Ronaldo, the latter even missing a penalty, it was @Pyfish who ended up coming through to win thanks to Harry Kane's goal in Extra Time for England against Slovakia. Congratulations to @Pyfish and thanks to everyone for taking part!

@Tommy @MUFC @Whiskey your reminder.

The ratio of vote share to seat share is a total mess this time around. Proportional representation is clearly a more democratic system even if the cost of it is more seats for parties like Reform. It's hard to get that through though because the government at any given time will always be a party who have won more than 50% of the seats with less than 50% of the votes and so by introducing proportional representation they're putting through a law that removes them from power. Hard to see how it ever comes about unless we get an election where Labour and Tory become so unpopular that they have to go into coalition with the Lib Dems or Reform and their partners agree on the condition they'll introduce PR or at least hold a national referendum on doing so.

Incredible rise and fall. Elected to Parliament in 2010 and in 14 years, managed to rise to one of the great offices of state, become Prime Minister, be ousted as PM and then lose her seat.

The left wing vote definitely has taken a bit of a chunk out of Labour in ways that not many people predicted. Most predictions had Corbyn as a toss-up and he cruised it, nobody had the independents standing as a Palestine protest vote against a Labour Party who are perceived to have been weak on the issue actually winning and a smattering of them did. Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting only held on by the skin of their teeth and even Starmer himself saw his personal vote share fall. Not many had the Greens to win as many seats as Reform either. Labour also failed to unseat Iain Duncan Smith because they needlessly deselected Faiza Shaheen who was very popular locally and matched the Labour candidate with 12,000 votes each. It's a historic majority for Labour but a fragile one in many ways and if you dig into it, the left-wing vote has done a pretty impressive job of organising the protest vote and sent some serious warning shots at the Labour leadership. They can't afford to write off the left next time around if the Tory and Reform vote unites again behind one of the right wing parties. I think it's quite a fascinating set of results actually even if the headline seat count has gone pretty much as expected.

Waking up to Labour en route for well over 400 seats, Lib Dems gaining 50 seats, Labour losing 5 seats so far to either Corbyn, Green Party or pro-Palestine independents, a number that outstrips the four seats that Farage's little bunch looks set to win overall. We will not hear left wing, pro-Palestinian or pro-environment voices amplified in the media in response to the millions of votes they've won though. We will only see and hear an awful lot more about Nigel Farage who will increasingly be treated as the unofficial opposition by the print and broadcast media including the BBC. Mustn't get too upset preemptively though. I've just seen Jacob Rees Mogg lose his seat not 5 minutes ago.

Galloway is out - good. Reports that Corbyn is going to win Islington North as an Independent candidate.

Yeah this 13 Reform seats thing isn't looking likely now. The exit poll had them to possibly win Barnsley against Dan Jarvis and they were 8,000 votes behind.

I hope Reform don't get into double figures. Seeing Farage win in Clacton on his own would have been bad enough. Labour now need to actually be a decent government and hopefully not get too tied down with "seeing off" Reform by being even more non-commital on immigration and other issues.