Bentley scores the first goal for England at Wembley! EDIT - Bloody hell Stu! Were you sat there waiting for it or something?

Bentley questions England snub

Nolan signs on for 28-day loan Young Irish defender Eddie Nolan has gone on a month-long loan to Stockport County in League 2.

Joe Garner has scored again for Carlisle. This time it is against Huddersfield although Sky Sports seem to be under the idea that Joe is the son of Simon! Jeff Stelling has said it on two separate occasions...maybe they think there is a family resemblance?!? Unless he likes a cig at half-time or something... Carlisle's Joe Garner Garner is obviously impressing as Carlisle wanted him on permanent terms and made a move this week but Hughes rejected their advances. No Carlisle deal for Blackburn's Garner Andy Taylor has been booked in the match for Huddersfield.

His earlier films tend to be better than the more recent. Cage was excellent in Leaving Las Vegas and rightly received an Oscar.

Mokoena has definitely improved but it doesn't mean he is a natural central midfielder in a 4-4-2 formation. Better teams will still overrun a midfield pairing of Tugay and Mokoena. The central midfielders need more help then compared to when Savage plays who is more mobile than The Axe. It is a huge improvement from Mokoena and he does seem to revel in confidence after a solid run in the team. Despite recent improvements though he remains at best a squad player and wouldn't normally be good enough to be considered for a regular starting place. Still...it's another bargain for Hughes. Mokoena is cheap, cheerful and can come in do a job. Compared him to how much our squad players have cost in the past (2-3 million often) and the wages they must have been on. Mokoena is certainly worth a lot more to the club than he cost.

Give him a chance...he was only 21 when he was here! A very impressive talent for that age. This season he is doing really well in La Liga. I'd certainly prefer a 22 year old Pongolle with bags of talent and promise than a 30-year old Nonda who isn't the player he once was due to injuries. Not much chance of it though as Hughes seemed to take the hump with him and left him out the side toward the end of the loan spell.

Didn't he also score against that German side?

Did he? Nonda turned 30 a few days ago and I can't really see the point in keeping him on. Although he has started scoring more regularly he doesn't seem anything special and his wage demands will most likely be high.

Yeah...but we should also remember that one of the people who wanted to sign Mido over Benni was Mark Hughes. Sparky made it clear who his first choice was.

Currently we have on loan... Franny Jeffers - Ipswich Town Andy Taylor - Huddersfield United Joe Garner - Carlisle United Bryan Hodge - Mansfield Town Tony Kane - Cercle Brugge Any others? The Huddersfield manager has been sacked today so where that leaves Taylor we will have to wait and see...

Sparky doesn't rate him. Peter has already gone on loan and proceeded to make a fool of himself which suggests that perhaps the problem is as much with his attitude as anything else.

Whatever did happen to Rover Drake? Or Tashor for that matter....

Hmmm...'Tugay.' ABBEY...you didn't get drunk and type 'gay' in the search engine did you?

Apparently the book was rubbish and the film is worse. Something along the lines of flogging a dead horse... Prequels are never easy to do but to go back so far into Hannibal's past so as to ruin any type of mystique and enigmatic quality of the character was a bad idea. The very point about Hannibal being scary is the past is unknown and we don't know why he is such a monster. Giving the reasons for him being like he was ruins it and makes him appear more human. All the terror audiences felt at the sight or thought of him was because he seemed so inhuman! tcj - The fifth Rocky is not great...it's an abomination. Even Stallone himself regrets how awful it was and when promoting the new one he has mentioned that a big reason was to try and get it right after getting V so wrong.

The thing that is so ridiculous is that, for once, expectations for England after McClaren's appointment were strangely low. For once the press weren't building us up and the fans weren't optimistic. We were uniformly poor at the World Cup. Yet despite that he has STILL managed to disappoint. The game against Macedonia was a shocker and that had followed a rubbish performance away to them when we fluked a win. The team is playing abysmally and has no clue, no formation and, at the moment, no hope. So for once don't try blaming media expectations or pressure from the fans...the man just inspires no confidence. The game against Israel is almost make or break already...we haven't even met Russia yet!

Hoddle is a good coach whose managerial career has been bedevilled by his woeful man-management skills. Which means that while he may be a success for a while it won't last too long. Early promise at Chelsea and Spurs lead onto infighting and mediocrity and at Southampton he jumped shipped before he had time to make an arse of himself. Despite his recent failure at Wolves it does show with him having being linked with the France job that his tactical nous is well-known. Good coach bad manager I believe. Yet McClaren (whose name I can rarely remember how to spell) supposedly is some tactical genius but certainly didn't display his stuff like a busy flasher in a raincoat might do. In fact it seems his tactical acumen is somewhat hidden away! During his last season at Middlesbrough, for example, he liked to wait until about three goals down with an hour of the tie left in Uefa games before going for all-out attack. Genius! Who on earth would have thought of a gung-ho attitude at that stage??? I mean, you know, apart from anyone relatively sane... It's worth remembering that this time last year the Boro fans were shouting for his head and one fan was even chucking his season ticket at him during a particularly abysmal capitulation against Villa. The best description for the feelings of Boro fans at McClaren leaving would be...utter indifference. Yet he is well regarded by the likes of Jim Smith and Alex Ferguson. There has to be something there. Changing the coach won't stop all the problems and turn the team into worldbeaters but getting in a quality manager will obviously help. Yet the FA refused to allow Martin O'Neill to bring in his own coaches with him (despite later bending over backwards to let in shifty old El Tel as Stevie Mac's guru or whatever he is) so that that, in the end, was that...

Hmmm....As for "It seems that England managers are deemed failures if they don't win the major tournament that England are quite clearly entitled to"...You know damn well Venables and Robson are lauded for getting us to semi finals so don't be such a drama queen. Go on then...out of the four managers that I mentioned (actually I will take Sven back as I don't think he is cack and made qualifying for tournaments a formality) - but out of Keegan, Hoddle and Maclaren then can you name an England manager not covered in his own cackness? Methinks not.

Hmmm...Hoddle, Keegan, Sven, Maclaren... Is it that they are all cack?

That is going to be even less likely in the future than it is now. Players don't want to take a wage cut to play abroad. When the likes of West Ham can seemingly pay as much in wages for a decent but unspectacular defender as Lucas Neill as, say, AC Milan and Barcelona (not that they were ever really after him anyway ) then something is skewed...it will only become more pronounced with the TV deal next year.

Hang on...the England beating Spain nine times out of ten jibe was from bazzanotsogreat. I certainly wouldn't agree with that. In fact under Maclaren I'm not sure we would win one out of ten we have been so poor.... People probably think you are just England-bashing as it is obviously a favourite hobby of yours and you do it every few posts! Anybody who has watched England in the past year or so should know that we are a poor side. That is the main thing...it's not about naming individual players or comparing right back to right back. It's how they play as a team the matters or, in the case of England, how they DON'T play as a team... We won't qualify for Euro 2008 unless there is a huge, and unlikely it seems, improvement under Maclaren. Ridiculously the FA are still paying money out to Sven until next year I believe...

Spain are one of the world's continually over-egged sides. They are a greasy version of England who also look good on paper and in the lists of an Aussie wind-up merchant. Your post also displays your inherent bias against all things 'pom'. Still...I must admit that we really are utterly crap. By the way - Morientes is one of the most overrated footballers the world has ever known.

Seems strange however as it is a friendly and he hasn't played for his national team for four years.

I've been critical about Todd in the past and rightly so I feel. The sending off against Birmingham when he kicked Dugarry up the bum was funny in hindsight but was also stupid and cost us two points. Likewise if the incident with Souness happened as reported (and yes I know Jan disputes this but then she also goes on to say he was "right") then that is bang out of order. You don't just walk out on your team even if the manager bizarrely picks an incompetent long-haired Italian in your place. It seems far more likely to be true when we consider a similar huff was taken when Hughes dropped him this season. Regardless of right and wrong (and Hughes acknowledges he isn't always right) sometimes you just have to grin and bear it. Having said that I'm glad he hasn't been sold. For whatever reason I didn't used to think of him as much of a player until 2003/2004 but he continued to improve and is vital to our team. It's debatable whether Todd or Ooijer is the best central defensive partner alongside Nelsen but with Andre out for a long time then not only should Andy stay but he should be in the starting line-up too. Spencey - Feel free to disagree and don't stop posting as all opinions hold water here...but accept that people may disagree with you and will let you know. This is a message board not a soapbox

I'll certainly be interested to see where he plays as it may be a pointer to how Hughes sees him. We need a central midfielder more than anything but, thus far, Dunn has not been able to cement a place in that position. It, supposedly, was part of the tension that developed when at Rovers and when he signed for Brum Steve Bruce suggested that is where his future lay. Despite that he often ended up being played on the right. I'm not sure he can play alongside Tugay. That may be the thinking of Hughes as his remarks about worrying about Tugay becoming burnt out may point to more game time for Mokoena or Bentley in the middle. Perhaps even Samba?