What an outstanding advert for women's golf the Solheim Cup was. Three days of high quality golf and to cap it all of a European victory. Can't wait for the Ryder Cup now.

The first summer in 20 years without a home test series victory and 3 test series in a row now without victory. To go to the Ashes with this coach and captain is tantamount to cricketing suicide, both are totally out of their depth in their respective roles.

I'm beginning to wonder if we value being in division 1 of the under 23's league as more important than developing under 23 players. The likes of Butterworth, Pike, Vale, Brennan, Annesley and McBride are either in their 20's or soon turning 20 and between them have a handful of senior appearances. You can only develop so much playing age group football when you are getting into your 20's you need to be starting to play senior football regularly. Magloire is probably 6th/7th choice and turns 23 in a few months playing under 23's football is of zero benefit to him, he should have been moved on by now. The Greek goalie isn't going to gain much from playing under 23's football he's already played senior top flight football in Bulgaria, he'd be learning much more out playing in league 2 say or the National League.

Burke's an interesting player he looked a very exciting talent at Forest and then started well at Leipzig but since then has bounced around a few clubs looking to live up to his potential. When I saw him play a few times for Sheffield United last season he had a lot of raw attributes but little end product, he reminded me a bit of a poor man's Adama Traore.

A clean sweep for the South in the quarter finals. Also nice to see 3 counties with non test/100 grounds in finals day that will annoy the ECB.

The first packed house sporting event that I have been to in 18 months or so and what a fantastic atmosphere it was at Taunton last night. No gimmicks needed just a sell out crowd getting behind their historic county. In knock out one day games the Taunton crowd is always worth an extra 15-20 runs and they got Lancashire rattled last night as was shown by some comedy fielding. Roll on Monday and the return of the Championship.

The Royal London Cup isn't being played because the ECB are prioritising it over the Championship as you said, in fact the ECB have done everything but prioritise it. The reason it is being played now is that something had to either be scrapped or downgraded to make way for the Hundred and the Royal London Cup is that competition. The Hundred has completely messed up the cricketing schedule in the country this season and has been prioritised over everything. Even if Championship cricket were being played now there is a fair chance that someone being called up to the test team would not be playing it as they would be in the hundred. But even if they were playing Championship cricket they would be playing against mainly second XI attacks (as most of the first XI attacks would be at the hundred) and that is no sort of preparation for facing this India attack. English cricket is heading back to the dark days of the 1990's I fear and the main reason for that is the appalling way in which the ECB has been running the game in this country.

As a league the MLS is a poor League but your national team at the moment has some very good young players coming through and I think come the 2026 World Cup (part of which will be played in the US) the US could well be viewed as contenders. Come 2026 the likes of Pulisic, Reyna, Dest, McKennie, de la Fuente, Weah, Sargent, Robinson, Musah and Adams are all going to be around their peak. However quite a few of those players have been developed outside of the US and very few of them have played MLS.

Do you really think the ECB are prioritising the Royal London Cup? I don't think you could be anymore wrong the Royal London Cup has been completely disregarded by the ECB and downgraded to basically a 2nd XI competition. The only thing that is being prioritised by the ECB this summer is the Hundred which they have recklessly and needlessly gambled the future of English cricket on.

And that's how you get a tail ender out pitch the ball up and bowl at the stumps. What a humiliating defeat that is and from the toss to todays tactics to the tail that is perhaps the worst display of captaincy in the history of test cricket from Root. England put healing Anderson's ego above winning a test match.

Looking like we should just about cling on for a draw but that this morning from Joe Root was some of the worst captaincy you will ever see on a cricket field and it took England from a commanding position to ending up battling for a draw.

He say's in the article “I think the players we sign will dictate the system that we play and see what the next few weeks bring.” Surely you can see that is ridiculous. You should sign players to fit your system not sign players and then decide what system you are going to play. A club that Mowbray has liked to hold up as an example in recent years is Brentford they are a club who have a system and long term vision in place and sign players to fit that. Sadly despite he words about Brentford Mowbray has always had a scatter gun approach to transfers.

You talk about 28-29 year old's as though they are ancient and on their last legs. Tugay was 31 when we signed him, McCarthy was 29, Savage was 30, Nelsen was approaching 28, Dunn was 28 when he resigned, Salgado was 33, Givet was approaching 29 and Ooijer was 32. I don't worry about their age I worry more about what they are going to bring to the team.

We won't go up with him be we could quite possibly go down without him. We'd have been in real trouble last season without his goals.

Are they?

Some might say that is what they have been doing for the last decade.

What gives you that idea? In looking at what he did at Barnsley the bloke is clearly very competent. In nearly 11 years with Venky's we have had one competent CEO (who they inherited) and he resigned after 3 months of them. No competent CEO is going to want to work at a football club that is so dysfunctional and chaotically run as ours.

Is that the same Watford who have spent 6 of the last 7 seasons in the Premier League, their one season out of it got automatic promotion from the Championship and also made the FA Cup final just a few years ago. Yeah we are just like them. Also if we were anything like Watford Mowbray would have been gone 2 and a half years ago.

But we aren't most Championship teams we are a dysfunctional mess. You talk of realism and realistically you must know that there is no chance of us making the top 6. The best we can hope for this season season is to avoid getting sucked into a relegation battle.

Says the poster who thinks we should be top 6 this season.

It's beneficial to City, Liverpool and the players as the players develop a step further in their career but for us it offers little benefit as a year later we are back to square one looking for another kid to develop for someone else for the next season.

That's a new one on me. 😆 In all seriousness though he takes a risky single hesitates and slips. The way he was rolling around on the pitch was something you expect these days to see on the football pitch but certainly not on a cricket pitch. It was a Lazarus like recovery as one minute he was rolling around as though his leg was falling off and a few minutes latter he was sprinting a 2. It was typical Root captaincy weak and non confrontational.

He certainly had a Lazarus like recovery. Weak captaincy from Root, Croft conned him. There was no upholding the spirit of the game from Croft.

Croft has obviously been watching too much of the Euro's. He should be thoroughly embarrassed with his antics which were certainly against the spirit of the game.

If the 11 that I responded to starts week in week out we will go down, I'm pretty certain we would go down. However I highly doubt that, that 11 will start week in week out and certainly not in the shape that was posted.