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frank fuckin lampard. has the shooting boots of gurney.

good solid performance in unbearable conditions. it really is stupidly fuckin hot out there. im a mexican and i couldnt watch a game in the sun let alone play one.

classic beckham free kick, good patient build up lets hope its raining next saturday. bring on portugal.

Agree.

Liked the way that Carrick played today. Thought he looked good in a holding role.

NMH

I think Lampard just edged out Terry for 'Most underwhelming performance' today. Though I don't really know how hot it was there.

He never did the simple thing, always went for 'goal' and was shit in both his passing and his shooting. At leact Gurns gets stuck in, Lampard didn't do ANYTHING in the whole game except miss sitters.

fuck off, lampards been bollocks this tournament fair enough, but how the fuck can you call a player completely overrated because of 3 or 4 games poor games compared to years of good performances. Bet this was never mentioned in the Euros when he was immense. What a fuckin moronic point of view.

yeah, gurney is better than lampard :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

lampard scored 20goals last season though  :roll:

I disagree about Lampard. The only thing that's missing from Lampard's game at the moment is his finishing and we know his finishing is outstanding so that will come. Agree that the performance was solid enough though given the heat. Not amazing but we're through to the quarter finals and that's what's important.

I was more disappointed with Gerrard today, some very poor touches and lost possession far too much. Beckham up to his goal was also poor. Much better from Ashley Cole though, Hargreaves had the best performance we've had at right-back so far. Rooney up to the last half an hour was average by his standards and seemed to be missing some pace but then got better and better and showed his class in the last half an hour or so. Carrick was very good.

Lennon though only on for 5 minutes was superb again, won corners and throwings which was just what we needed at that stage, made good runs and a great challenge. Hope we see more of him next game.

Holland are one of the top 5 teams in the world cup in my opinion, along with England so that will be a tough game even if Portugal beat them.

Looking at the head to heads, Portugal seem to have the edge on the Dutch.

 Not sure who would be preferable....either way we're going to have to play a lot better, but there are signs the formation worked OK, and Rooney is getting stronger.

 Lampard was average at best, but he and Gerrard did get up to support Rooney, and we know he can score a goals so it may happen next game.

bring on anyone  :beers:

Funtime Frankie isn't playing well at the moment, granted, but he's hardly overrated!

I actually didn't think that Carrick did very well. When you compare his performance with Hargreaves against Sweden then he comes up well short. He (Carrick) wasn't there to recieve the simple pass from the defence, and wasn't there to break up the Ecuador attacks. He showed glimpses but not enough to keep his place in my opinion.

 :wanker:  :wanker:

Whoever slags Lampard off is simply wrong, there is no debate to be had, end of story.

Mex stop fucking changing your allegiance according to whose in and out it's gay.

Very eloquent. Thanks for your contribution.

Carricks passing was good, very good in places. But he didn't play the 'Anchor' position as well as Hargreaves did the other day due to his comparitively poor tackling and positioning to recieve passes.

Lampard may well come good, but he's not been the player he's been for Chelsea whilst playing for England. Not for a long while. It's tough to draw the line with regards to Form v Class> Lampard has class and could come good at any time, but he's costing us by playing below his usual standards.

no player is really costing us at all because england are getting the right results,that is all that matters.
no side or player really stands out so the competition is wide open as far as i'm concerned.
we are one of many teams that could realisticaly win the world cup.
i thought hargreaves did well and ashley cole looked alot better today,generally a better performance all round but could still be improved

i don't honestly think that there is a less convincing and more underwhelming side than us in the tournament. suppose good sides win and get results when it matters, so maybe we could go all the way. in the meantime i remain about as convinced of the abilities of this side as i am of dale winton's heterosexuality.

lampard was in shit form for chelsea last third of the season too. an aoverated player carried by quality team mates, now not cutting the mustard. people say that beckham should be dropped but what about lampard? beckham won the game for england today.

note to spastic dave, im not changing allegiance, vamos mexico pendejo.

It's like Italia 90 all over and it’s fucking brilliant  8)

Think I'd prefer the Dutch over the Portuguese on evidence so far.

Apart from Beckham's goal he was fairly anonymous though and if he hadn't scored that then Lampard would have had a better game than him. I wouldn't drop either Beckham or Lampard.

behave you lot.
lampard was probably our best midfeilder today and was just a bit unlucky infront of goal.
seems like people are ready to say "there's no way we'll win the world cup" but still slag them off when they dont all play like ronaldinho.
too easy to criticise someone when they dont score but dropping him would be very silly indeed.
he WILL score vs portugal

I watched the game in a bar, so was very distracted with other things around me. Just two observations, rather than criticisms

1. We need more width and to get crosses in from the byline rather than from deep.

2. We need to adopt a system, then pick the best players to play that system. If this means leaving out Lampard/Gerrard/Cole, then Sven should have the balls to do it. Wishful thinking on my part though.

Thought we played our best football right after we scored for about 15-20 minutes.

Encouraging, and cautiously optimistic we'll do Portugal.

I'm back in Blighty on Wednesday to join in the fun back home   :beers:

Franks confidence in front of goal wasn't helped by his penalty miss a few weeks ago. I'm happy he keeps finding space to shoot and soon enough you never know, he might get a goal. I'd prefer him to have a go than not basically.

ooops
Mexico Red is gay!
yeah so what - leave the guy alone - let him counter sink turds!
just cos he thinks Frank junior is shite for a match
IT's NOT HIS FAULT

Im with Mex on this one,Lampard has been pretty average so far but at least we know that he has the ability to play better . This is Tournament football , lose now and you are out , Who gives a fuck if we have to grind out a few wins ? We CAN win this world cup . C,MON ENGLAND !!!!!

Yeah we CAN win it but we dont look like world cup winners at the moment.When you look at the quality of the first 2 second round matches we are well short of that at the moment.We dont look clever enough in and around the box,unlike Germany,Argentina and even Mexico.Luckily 2 of those teams will be out by the semis,so we could get to the semi without actually having to play a top class side,where we will meet probably Brazil or Spain then if we haven't improved we will struggle

To be honest and IMHO this has been one of the worst world cups so far , probably on a par with USA 94 . i havent seen 1 game yet that has had me on the edge of my seat and im not overly impressed with anyone . I do agree that we need to step up a gear and play the games at a more urgent pace ,the midfield doesnt seem to function with Becks,Lampard,Gerrard,Cole who are great players in their own rights but dont seem to be able to work as a unit.

:old:

fuckin told you so.

Not even a penalty in the shootout... quality.

i've said for a while he's the new paul scholes (and to me that's not a good thing) he's pretty average in most areas bar finishing and movement. shame he lost all his ability apart from his movement

Gerrard was the player I was most disappointed with, one decent goal but not a lot else.

I felt Gerrard was one of the few players who would be leaving the tournament with some credit.

What scares me is that it's Hargreaves and Lennon and possibly Crouch who I feel most deserve to leave the tournament with their heads held high.

I knew Lennon wouldn't let us down, very important player for the future. Crouch was unlucky not to play more. Hargreaves did well. Joe Cole did ok, Terry and Ferdinand were both not too bad.

Gerrard, far too many shit passes, didn't think he played well in any of the games. No way near his Liverpool form. Lampard was no way near his top form either but although he had a lot of shots and didn't score  he did come close on a number of occasions and was unlucky not to score, I think he's just a convenient scapegoat for a lot of people.