AspRover

My criticism is not really aimed at the players, I have no issues with Mainoo and hope he will go on to be a very good player for England.

Well it turns out TAA and Gallagher are not Kalvin Phillips, so we'll see if Mainoo is Kalvin Phillips. If not, it's uncertain where Southgate will turn next.

The last few pages have had a debate over whether a non-english manager can or should manage an England football team. That we have a non English manager in charge of an England football team and that she has won a major tournament seems relevant to me.

I know that to many on here womens football is at best an irrelevance but Serena Wiegman as a Dutch manager of an England side has at least won a major tournament.

I think that the Phillips comment really shows what's going on in Southgate's head - he had his most successful spell playing 4-2-3-1 with Rice and Phillips and he's absolutely desperately trying to recreate that even though half the players have changed. Completely unwilling to adapt those tactics to suit the new lineup, because those were the tactics that got us into a final, so he has to find a player to be the new Phillips rather than letting a new starter play to their strengths. It's 100% Mowbray 'he needs to learn our system from Ritchie Smallwood' Absolutely wild

Lol at Southgate telling them to calm down

From his own error to be fair, but yeah Guehi is one of the only players to come out of both games with a lot of credit, he looks decent.

If Kane drops deep Bellingham needs to push up and be the striker for a sec. One of them always needs to be forward.

Oh good, a Gallagher, we all know they bang the goals in

Tell you what in about thirty years the England walking football side is going to be mint

For all we know Rudy could be a genius who will transform the running of the club. For all we know he might be utterly incompetent. The problem is that he is a new graduate and has absolutely zero track record on which to judge. Do we even know what degree he achieved at least? What his dissertation subject was? Got to say appointing the work experience kid as CEO would be extremely Venkys.

Somehow I find the idea that parachute payments Burnley and recently promoted to league one Stockport are fishing in the same pool for players a tad unlikely

If we are giving players with terrible injury records a chance to win a contract there's this bloke who's on itv a lot we could have a look at

Yeah you are probably right, I was thinking swag might add a mil for that prem money, but then I remembered how cheaply we let kaminski go under similar circumstances.

I'd actually like to see him get a run at 10, I think he might surprise a few.

Gallagher is a solid second or third choice championship striker in a well run squad, it's just that we are paying him to be our first choice striker and leading goal scorer in a badly run squad, so he is/has been poor value for us. If Ipswich are planning for the season after, when they are likely back in the Championship, then I can see why they might want to pick him up, though you'd think that they'd have better targets to go after. He would be cheap relative to their budget now they have premier league money and I think we'd want to sell purely for the wage budget impact so there would definitely be a deal to be done. It would be more than the 1.5m they reportedly bid in January but closer to that than 8m - I'd guess we could probably talk them up to 3-4m maybe, if they are serious. I'd give it maybe a 5% chance of being a real story/actually happening.

I'd argue he is faster and more direct than Palmer, though I admit I haven't seen a ton of either outside of highlights so I might be wrong. There's a EUFA page where you can compare player stats - unfortunately Palmer isn't on it, but it suggests that Saka is faster than Grealish, Foden and Bellingham, and about the same as Sancho in terms of top recorded speed and average top speed per match. Gordon is recorded as faster than all of them.

To be fair if Saka can murder second rate teams he should be starting vs at least one of Serbia or Slovenia, you need to use the whole squad. I think that if you are playing Kane and Bellingham through the centre (which we should be, and they should have license to change through the match - one drops deep, the other pushes forward) and Foden on the left then I'd probably play Saka over Palmer simply because I think he has a bit more pace and that's the one thing our front line is arguably a bit short of. Palmer and Foden with Kane provides bags of technical play but you are relying on Bellingham to do a lot of running - It changes a bit if you play Watkins or Toney up front for a game. I like the idea of having the option to go with a very front foot, fast and aggressive front line with players like Saka, Eze, Gordon against some of the weaker teams or even as a plan B if we find ourselves chasing a game. This might be one of the most well balanced squads we have sent to a tournament in a while - the only thing I wish we had was another left-footed left back.

I mean here's hoping

At times I have wondered if it has reached the point where being able to say 'I own a football club and I don't even care about it' has become a flex in its own right.

If Dolan was rapid and had a peak football brain he wouldn't be playing for us. I used to joke that if Jason Roberts could finish he'd be called Drogba. You have to make do with what you've got to a certain extent, and he's shown that he can play at this level and get a goal or two even if he is frustrating. That said, Dolan is a player I wouldn't object to selling as I think he has the highest perceived value outside the club (fans of other clubs seem to rate him quite highly, at least) compared to his actual ability, I think there's a chance of getting more for him than he is actually worth. Lets be frank though, if we sell him we aren't buying anyone better, we are just hoping that one of the kids can make the step up and be as good or better.

Fair enough. Grealish has had a poor, injury hit season where he has largely been kept out of that position by Foden. Bellingham has played as an attacking player for Madrid for most of the season and scored a lot of goals. Dropping Bellingham deeper effectively to fit Grealish into the squad doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I think Wharton and Rice is a very complimentary pairing.

Foden on the left, Bellingham at 10, Rice and Wharton behind him. Genuinely think it's the strongest lineup England can put out.

Ah I got the order backwards, it's almost like I was seven when it happened...

I mean we kind of didn't, I think signing Shearer was a British record at the time but not close to a European or world record, and that got eclipsed by Man utd signing Keane(?) within a year. He wasn't even a record fee for a British player - Platt and Gascoigne went for more in the same season, just in Italy, assuming Transfermarkt is accurate. That was about it as far as smashing transfer records. Shearer to Newcastle was a world record when it happened. We did spend a lot of money for the time though. I think Chris Sutton was our most expensive signing overall, but we paid less than Man utd did for Andy Cole in the same season. Hendry a bit of an odd one in that he signed in '87 (before Jack), left in '89 and then re-signed in '91, so he both wasn't and was an Uncle Jack signing.