Thetownend.com

Quite how we're supposed to play with no midfield I have no idea.

The Irish will be even more fervent in their support of our opponents tonight too.

Gibbs, Henderson, Smalling and Cleverley.

No wonder we'll never win anything with that dross playing

would rather be watching ibra vs ronaldo

Just turned over to it

Is Kyle Walker a professional footballer?

Good show for Townsend and Lallana mind. Would have been nice for Lambert to play over Rooney too.

Joe Hart made a couple of good saves early on but just punched Smalling in the back of the head. He probably deserved it, but still...

Wilshere for Cleverly, should be better.

more so than Jordan Henderson

Ronnie's making a good case for him to be footballer of the year over Messi. I don't want him to get it because he's a cunt of course, but that's not to say it should automatically go to Messi every year.

Switched to Sweden v Portugal at half time and made the right choice. Currently 2-3. Ibra 2 Ron 3. Cracking half!

See the French have pulled the playoff game vs Ukraine back to 2-2.

Wolves 2-0 down at home to Oldham in the FA Cup, Adam Rooney scoring.

It's very lacklustre from England, they haven't done anything to convince me they will get out of the group stage in Brazil...and this is against a Germany B/C team! 

It's a bit of an England B/C team today to be fair. Chris Smalling? Kieran Gibbs?

If this Barkley kid is supposed to be the next big thing then we might as well give up now. Absolute dogshit.

So, we've let them get one over us yet again! It's simply not good enough. Our overpaid, underperformers are not as good as they think they are.

0-1 then. I imagine most will now revert to doom-monger status for the coming months, citing defeats against two fairly decent teams as a sign that we're currently on a par with Scotland.

Kyle Walker and Ashley Cole were poor tonight, and defending from balls into the box wasn't good enough. Henderson should be nowhere near an England shirt, and Ross Barkley didn't impress, but he's only 19.Other than that it was a reasonable performance against a team who were well organised and were clearly delighted with a hard earned win at the end. Lallana and Townsend did well.

Having a half-decent manager/FA might fucking help too.

And there are some sparks there- Lallana and Townsend for example, as Reeves has said. But where have they come from? Not from the posterboy teams of the 'big three', but from relative obscurity.

It would be nice if the FA and England management realised there was such a thing as teams outside the Prem with good players, and that building a team who will work together and have a Plan A and a Plan B and a Plan C for whatever team they come across is more important than sticking some overpaid tossers who will sell some more shirts in just because they 'deserve it'.

 Think most people now realise that our national team is a bit limited, so qualification is decent, and depending on the draw we might get out of the group...don't think anyone really thinks we'll be capable of much more.  The main thing should be to give it a bit of a go...play with some pride.

It helped that we had the easiest qualifying group, too!

Danny Baker is on form this evening.  A few examples of his output:

Danny Baker ‏@prodnose 21m
England. There is nothing to be "learned" from losing a match other than you tried to win but didn't know how. Everything else is bullshit.
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Danny Baker ‏@prodnose 14m
Roy Hodgson: "We were no fucking good. That's all there is to it. I'm fucked if I know why but there it is. Fucking awful. Now what?"
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Hate to admit it, but he's right.

Didn't have a shot on target all game. Why on earth this dross still attracts 80,000 is beyond me

What staggers me is the time it has taken for a lot of people to realise that we are not any good.

We are just not comftable on the ball, we dont have the confidence to actually pass the ball forward on the floor, We have no composure, kept making the wrong decisions time and time again. But this has been happening for years now. If we get the the 1/4 finals in the WC then it be a miracle.

It's about time we stopped pretending we can play sophisticated football and revert back to what we do well.

2 wide men supplying a 'lump' in the middle...what's the point of having Townsend et al getting crosses in when all we have in the middle is Sturridge and Rooney.

We ain't never going to play quick-footed football in and around the box and slip people in so why pretend we can

Not at the moment we cant, but give it 10 years I think we can, Even the lower leagues are passing it about more rather then just lumping it forward. I would hazard a guess, and say out U21 could prob play better football then the senior side to be honest

Audrey has a point...our U 21's were terrible in the summer tournament, so not much coming from there.

Woy, would probably like to use Andy Carroll....not sure what his injury status is.

'Brain dead', I think Reg!

Didn't bother to watch it. Glad I didn't bother to watch it  :bye:

The Under 21s won 9-0 last night at least.

I watched game of thrones series 1 last night instead of the england match, had a feeling we'd get beaten.

See, I thought a few players did well in the last two games... it's just a shame they get played alongside perennial failures and stalwarts past their best. Lampard on Friday managed to reproduce his Chelsea form (dire), and Milner was the usual combination of effort and limited talent. Cleverly (and to a lesser extent Wilshere) were again disappointing last night, Smalling isn't very good, and Hart found himself playing (quite well if you ignore him clattering Smalling) despite being woefully out of form - Forster should have played and gained more experience.

Amongst all that negativity (and more if I could be bothered... nnnggghhhh Jordan Henderson...), Lallana looked handy both games (despite BBC rating him 5/10 last night!), Townsend has continued to look exciting, and Gerrard is playing like a captain (hard for me to admit, I hate him...). And we are trying to play better possession football at least, and some younger inexperienced players are getting some game time (although not enough in some cases).

England have been shit for quite a while and show no signs of improvement. They will go to make up the numbers in Brazil. A south american team will win it.