DE.

I'd take Russia. Host nation or not we should beat them. I'd be worried about what Croatia's midfield could do to our defence.

In 2002 Germany qualified out of a group including Ireland, Cameroon and Saudi Arabia. Their route to the final was Paraguay, the USA and South Korea. Who remembers all of this? Nobody. All people remember is that Germany played in the final against Brazil.

It's over. Can't see Sweden getting two.

Sweden are just an incredibly pedestrian team. No pace and no creativity. They've done very, very well to get this far but if we get another goal it's over.

Hopefully we don't live to regret Sterling being Sterling. No point him getting into these positions when he doesn't have the confidence to finish it off.

Indeed. Some of these players have egos, granted, but all sportspeoole do. You don't become a champion without a bit of an ego. It's not the same as it was with some of the cretins who wore the England shirt 10-12 years ago. Having an English manager helps too. I've always thought it was wrong and embarrassing for a country of our footballing pedigree and development to be using foreign managers for the national team. Just another factor that made it hard to connect with England teams recently. Admittedly I was equally opposed to Roy but that's mainly because I felt he was the wrong man for the job in every possible way, and so it turned out to be.

There was a period in the mid-00's when I went off the national team. I found it difficult to support the likes of Terry, Ashley Cole, Rooney, etc. Supporting England is much easier now that those types of characters are gone.

A lot of the proper Man Utd supporters genuinely despise the England national team. They never got over the whole "stand up if you hate Man U" chants and the Beckham vilification from the late 90's.

The problem is that Sterling isn't particularly skilful or composed - not in an England shirt, anyway. With Sweden likely to play two banks of four for much of the match he's going to need more than raw speed to get a decent chance. There's going to need to be link up play with Lingard/Ali/Kane, which so far we've seen very little of.

The main difference between Sterling and our other misfiring attacking midfielders is that Sterling loses possession far more often. You could argue that's because he's at least trying to beat a man, take a shot or put through a good ball, but a lot of the time against Colombia it was simply poor play. I'd like him to cut that out and try to be more patient. I think his lack of goals or impact in general for the national side is getting into his head a bit and causing him to make bad decisions. Southgate needs to remind him that the less he thinks about making an impact the more likely he actually will. Personally I'm not sure Sweden is the type of game a player like Sterling is going to thrive in. Their rigid, defensive formation will be very difficult to get behind, and Sterling doesn't have the strength or technical ability to get through from the front. At Manchester City he's surrounded by very skilled players who are constantly pulling defenders out of position. Not so much with England. I'm hoping and praying he proves me wrong but I'm not convinced Saturday's game will be one he plays a starring role in.

I respect anybody who can use the multi-quote system effectively tbh. Whenever I try to do it the posts seem to inexplicably roll up into each other and become pretty much unreadable.

I'm amazed Sweden netted three against Mexico. Not sure what happened there. They've only managed to score one goal in all of their other matches so scoring a couple should in theory see us through.

I think we're somewhere between the mega hype and the more negative viewpoints. We're a team who has a lot of potential, works hard and clearly has a strong team spirit. We've got an intelligent, young manager who seems to understand how to manage at international level, and in Harry Kane a genuine leader who scores goals (yes, penalties count) and scares opposition defenders. On the other hand we do have issues with our style of play being a work-in-progress, our defensive play is often lacking and as a result we can't seem to help but concede at least one goal per match. We also have the problem of our creative trio (Ali/Lingard/Sterling) not really producing against anybody except Panama so far. Getting to the semi finals with this team would be a very, very good achievement imo. Granted we've had the luck of the draw but a lot of big teams have crumbled against technically weaker opposition in this tournament. So far, we haven't.

Ali doesn't appear to have been fully fit since he got injured against Tunisia and was then needlessly kept on the pitch for practically the entire match. Our creativity issue is more to do with shape than personnel. It's hard to be creative when you're leaving the middle of the park empty, negating the ability to slot in through balls. Instead we're constantly trying to cross the ball into the area because everybody is high up the pitch. It's little wonder almost all of our goals have been from set pieces. We've been lucky so far in that we have played teams with limited ability - with the exception of Belgium, and that match was basically an exhibition. If Sterling loses the ball against Croatia (assuming they beat Russia and we beat Sweden) and we've left a huge gap in midfield we will get punished. If Rodriguez was playing last night we would have been punished. I can see our match against Sweden being a pretty torrid affair in all honestly. One team who are still struggling to adapt their system and another whose entire style is essentially built on being rigid and defensive. Another 1-0 win from a set-piece could be on the cards. Or a loss in reverse.

I think it might be more the attempt to link the three behind Kane that's the problem. It's a lot to ask for any of the four of them to become a cohesive unit in a fairly fluid, passing system within the space of a few weeks. It might explain why we've only seen glimpses of potential compared to the consistency those players show for their clubs. I still think Rashford (or even Vardy) keep the ball better than Sterling. One of the worst things you can do is needlessly give away possession whilst on the attack and Sterling has been doing it repeatedly. He either needs to make better decisions or be dropped.

Southgate has tried to be loyal to Sterling but it just isn't working. He's not clicking with his team mates and the amount of times he loses possession is a serious problem. We've got Rashford, Loftus-Cheek or Dier who could come in and replace Sterling, depending on how we want to play, so he's far from irreplaceable. Time to admit it isn't working and try something else. Sweden are a very compact team so I don't see Sterling being able to do much against them.

Agreed. Part of me feels like we need another natural midfielder in the centre to drop back and distribute passes alongside Henderson, but obviously that would come at the expense of our attacking options and would mean dropping one of Ali, Lingard or Sterling. I'm not sure that would necessarily be in our best interests as we're already struggling to score from open play (Panama aside). On the other hand Sterling's inability to keep possession and lack of end product is arguably more of a detriment. Fortunately in Maguire we have a player who is willing and able to carry the ball out of defence himself if need be, but our issues come when the opponent starts to box us into a corner, which either leads to us losing possession or knocking it back to Pickford for the big punt up the pitch. Hopefully Southgate is looking at this as it's one of our biggest weaknesses and had we come up against top opposition at any point in this tournament (Belgium's second string not being counted) I feel we would have been harshly punished for it by now.

Our creativity void is an issue, but more worrying for me is our attempts to play out from the back. I understand the idea, particularly as we have a lot of small players in attack who aren't going to win headers, but the way we go about it is all wrong. We continually get into situations where the back three are passing it between themselves (and sometimes one of the wing backs) with no outlet. Ultimately it ends up going back to Pickford who boots it up the pitch, negating the point of passing it around the back to begin with. It's mainly because not enough players are dropping back to make themselves available for the pass. Multiple times last night Kyle Walker was calling for players to come back and help them out, which shouldn't be necessary. If we're going to play like this then players should automatically be ready to drop back and pick up a pass. Southgate must see this as a problem as we've had the same issue since the start of the tournament. If we want to pass it around like we're Spain then OK, but unless players make themselves available for the ball it's not going to work. Far too often last night there was a huge gap between the first and final third of the pitch, where nobody was dropping back to try and receive the ball from defence. In extra time Kane ended up coming back to do it as nobody else was stepping up. Southgate needs to tell some of these players to be braver and show for the ball. Hiding up the final third of the pitch waiting for a ball to be hoofed up is no good when we've got Alli, Sterling and Lingard trying to win headers. One of the three needs to drop back to pick up the ball on the floor from either the defence or Henderson/Dier.

This. One of the most disgusting performances I've ever seen. Their bullying of an admittedly weak referee was reprehensible. As far as I'm concerned they go home in disgrace.

The worst way to go out, and Colombia earned it. A disgrace to the world cup. What's worse is that they were actually decent when they tried to play. A shame they rarely had any intention of doing so. Karma collected at the end.

As nasty and dirty as Colombia have been, not being able to score from open play against them is appalling. They are a really, really poor team and they don't even have their best player on the pitch.

Two for us.

We've conceded a goal in every game this tournament, even against Panama. As soon as Colombia attempted to attack it was obvious they would score. We just cannot keep it out of our own net. The big teams, the winners, don't concede those type of goals. We're still not right mentally and truth be told we've not even been particularly good in this match. Set pieces have been poor and we've never looked like scoring from open play. We still think we're Barcelona passing it around at the back like idiots and getting caught out.

We can't keep clean sheets. It's pathetic.

Colombia are an absolute disgrace. A total embarrassment.