THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

This.

They're all pretty good.

Foden was an animal today. Walker defies belief with his longevity. Trippier versatile and reliable. Rashford sloppy in moments but a superb goal, our captain was utterly sensational. Leads by example. So glad he's got out of Spurs.

We are the real deal. Just a shame the managers an idiot.

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"It's not about hoping this little moment will change our momentum, its about our daily actions and courage in everything we do.. We've got to stop believing in fairytales"

- Graham Alexander, October 2023

When England play badly, the Manager is an idiot. When they play well, the players are brilliant despite the manager.

It’s funny, younger fans don’t rate Southgate. But those of us who’ve seen many years of underachieving and failure give him more credit.

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

Yep. It's all in spite of him and not because of him. He's an idiot.

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"It's not about hoping this little moment will change our momentum, its about our daily actions and courage in everything we do.. We've got to stop believing in fairytales"

- Graham Alexander, October 2023

I think Southgate did a very good job in 2018-2019 with the squad he had at his disposal. A mix of Big Six subs, youngsters, older players with a lack of international experience and just the overall negativity around the national team.

What he has done with the squad since 2021 is respectable. The level of firepower, quality, skill and experience at all levels in this side we have he is achieving the bare minimum he should be. It's been largely miserably boring to average to watch and the lack of game changing tactical decisions/substitutions mean he deserves to be questioned at times. We've won pretty much all the games we expect to win, and well done to him because you can only beat what is in front of you. But in those moments when you need a leader to step up to empower a team to either dominate a game or change a game, he hasn't done it.

He's not an idiot. But I think a lot of managers and coaches around the world could have got this England team to achieve what Southgate has done, the question is will he learn from his mistakes (which he didn't between Euros and WC) to get them to the next level. If many of the squad played with the freedom, speed, creativity and confidence they do at club level, then there is no reason why this squad shouldn't be winning things right now.

This squad, alongside France are easily the most exciting and gifted in the World right now, man for man. The fact we've got a bloke picking a reckless 27 year old injury prone holding midfielder lucky not to have been sent off yesterday is the sort of reason *we'll probably chuck it away again.

*he will.

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"It's not about hoping this little moment will change our momentum, its about our daily actions and courage in everything we do.. We've got to stop believing in fairytales"

- Graham Alexander, October 2023

Which makes the inevitable spectacular fuck-up even more hilarious.

It's going to be the biggest English disaster trying to conquer Germany since Operation Market Garden.

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"You bought a bank out of social embarrassment? I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

And again.

Tottenham v Chelsea

Crazy Crazy game

1 - 1 HT

Just the one red card so far, although it could easily have been three