Lancaster Rover

Arda Guler will go on to be a phenomenal footballer. Watched a bit of him before his move to Madrid and thought he looked excellent, they’ve taken a softly softly approach with him at Madrid but by Christ he announced himself to the wider football world last night

Think it's been pretty even between whether he plays LB or CB, usually plays LB for the national team. Went to Bayern as a LB but played more as a CB there, played more as a LB at PSG this year before his injury. My point still remains that France's first and second choice left backs are from the same family.

Maddest thing about Theo Hernandez is that he’s only playing due to his brother Lucas tearing his ACL. Two of the best left back me in the world growing up in the same house, crazy.

I think Italy are a really good side. The lack of exposure of Italian football in the country lulls people into thinking they’re not top level because we’ve not seen them week in week out, nobody was talking about Caliofori before the competition and I can guarantee by the end of it he’ll be one of the top defenders

Kane isn’t a 10 as long as I have a hole in my head, opposition defenders are happy to let him drop in midfield and have the ball there as it means they can squeeze up and compress the play. Even if they don’t push up he’s not going to turn and run anyone so centre halves are happy for him to go in there. Even if they let him turn England weren’t going to get in behind so it’s zero threat. Kane going wandering is part of the problem. Someone needs to get hold of him and tell him to stay as high as possible. Too many players being allowed to play where they want rather than where they should.

I thought that was poor last night. For all the talk of England played well for 30 minutes, that was in large part due to Serbia being so incredibly passive, the minute they realised they were in a game and started to press England in any was they folded like a deckchair. For all the possession in those first 30 minutes it was all just recycling the ball without any incision or movement that would open up passing lanes. Massive difference to Italy the night before, who moved the ball with real purpose in order to move Albania to create gaps. The desperate shoehorning of TAA into the team created a massive imbalance, everyone knows he cannot defend, as a result Rice sat so deep in order to cover the mistakes that everyone knew would happen. The game was crying out for genuine width second half to stretch the play and give Serbia something to think about, instead Southgate brought on willing (but limited) runners who scurried around in our own half. What was needed was an out ball to get them up the pitch. The shape doesn't bring the best out of England's best assets

Yeah it was poor, it’s because they ditched the stripes and went for that contrasting arms job ha ha. We got relegated with yellow and black contrasting arms too if I remember rightly, princess trust one?

I hope the away kit is stripes rather than pinstripes a La 93/94 and 00/01, they could have chucked in some real nostalgia with a yellow and black 3rd kit. We’ve always had good seasons when wearing red and black as an away kit, fingers crossed that continues!

They’ve absolutely no interest in signing him, it’s a PR exercise to get the wheels In morion of ‘gearing up’ for a busy transfer window, just in time for season tickets to go on sale. Fancy that, talking up a potentially exciting transfer prospect to coincide with season tickets going on sale………

The rangers deserve everything they get, cheated their way to titles which damaged countless Scottish clubs not just Celtic

They've been making a right dogs dinner of the play offs, went into it with a 6 point lead and are now 3 points behind. I go and watch them each year, Sykes spent the first half of the season injured but seems to have played most weeks since then. Been keeping Kevin MacAllister out the team (Alexis' brother). USG have a couple of players worth looking at to be fair, Cameron Puertas has assets coming out of his ears, Mo Amoura has scored loads of goals and the Japanese left back Koki Machida is a cracking player.

I think it was the combination of MacFadz and Wharton together that lead to us playing so deep, you'd hope with Carter coming in more regularly and Hyam getting back to where he was last season we'd play higher. For all the comments re MacFadz (lack of pace) I don't think there would be much between him and Scott in a straight line.

Weirdly, that's exactly what is about to happen with Netflix reducing the screens and putting in adverts unless you pay them an extra couple of quid

This month and next will be the ones where loads of people have final payments on summer holidays, etc due. Leaving it this late is commercially insane with the amount of competing financial priorities that people have going into the summer. As we've seen, once the habit is broken, Saturdays get filled with other things and it's very hard to get people back.

Bit annoying all these instagram and self-proclaimed twitter experts praising Wharton like they found him down the back of the sofa, also, them calling him the Blackburn Beckenbauer need telling its the Wilpshire Pirlo, end of.

Lad called Kevin Denkey has been ripping it up for Cercle Brugge in the Belgian pro league, he’d be well worth a look.

FFP has played a blinder for Palace here, due to many of the top end clubs being terrified of spending money they could get him for a snip, can sell him on for double if not more than what they paid in a very short space of time. Realistically they could have him for 12 months and bag 40 million profit. between Eze, Olise and Wharton they’re probably looking at netting north of 150 million in the next year.

Siggy is obviously a good footballer, his first few games he looked sharp, took up some really intelligent positions and his finishing was excellent. Converted nearly all the chances that fell to him. Once we started on the death spiral toward the end of Nov his form took a catastrophic dip as he was being asked to do more work, which I don't think he was physically prepared for/fit enough to do. From that point it looked like he was playing catch up and his confidence nose dived, he also seemed to suffer further dips when he went away on international duty. Hopefully a successful rehab where he builds strength and underlying baseline levels of championship fitness will set him up to have a good pre-season and be firing on all cylinders. There is comfortably a 15 a season player in there.

He'd be worth the money even if to add competitiveness and bite in training and pre-season.

Whilst I do think we fell short in what we sold him by 8-10 million, nobody is going to pay 50 million for a Championship player no matter how good we know they will be. 10 good games in the Prem is worth 2 seasons in the championship, rightly or wrongly.

He's done the job he was recruited to do IMO, nothing more, nothing less. He certainly doesn't get a free hit from me going into pre-season, in fact I think the pressure is now on to prove he's more than an emergency stop gap. The next 6 weeks are where he earns his crust, a forensic review of where the strengths and weaknesses lie, how we address those from a personnel and formation/style point of view. Decide what is a realistic style of play to retain our status as a championship club and hopefully get back to chasing play-offs and promotion. He's proved that he can make us hard to beat, I want to see him show how he's going to turn those draws into wins. That doesn't necessarily mean dominating possession or going back to JDT ball, it does however mean we need to either be more clinical or create more. All the loanees obviously go back and we're left with a fairly shallow squad, the only out of contract player I'd retain is McFazdean as I think his experience and commitment has been invaluable and has been far and above the player Hyam has been the last 15 games.

Sammie Szmodic FC

Yes, there’s is the strangest performance

it's the fact we've not been in the bottom 3 all season that worries me, it's one of those million to 1 stories that seems to happen in football. Similar to Royal Antwerp winning the Belgium league last year having been top for the final 3 minutes of the season and winning it. I have this horrible feeling we drop into the bottom 3 with minutes to spare, spending the shortest time ever in the relegation places yet being relegated and again with a 50 point total!

League 1 is a lot better standard than it was last time we were in it