Wonderful spin, mon pote.

That trip to Sarajevo on Tuesday looks a bit daunting.

Danny converts a Quaresma corner to put Portugal on top, but they quickly concede an equaliser.

Portugal 3-3 Cyprus.
i'm tweeting the game if anyone's interested: @footballport

(and Manuel Fernandes has just scored ... 4-3!!)

Portugal 4-4 Cyprus.

Bollix!

Bloody hell.

Have France really lost 1-0 at home to Belarus?

Crikey.

diggedy derek wrote:
The England kit makes no sense on any level. How could you leave the red off?



My guess is that it was decided that the colour red should bear the brunt of the blame for the performance against Germany in the World Cup.

It's certainly never done us any good.

One player who quietly impressed tonight – Ashley Cole. Always a pretty good player, but he'd have been a nightmare to mark tonight.

Rooney and Defoe doing well up front relies upon two at least adequately dynamic and mobile wide midfielders making runs around them. If Lampard comes back into the starting line-up, and Gerrard goes to the left, they'll be rubbish again. Dropping Lampard would be a small but positive step.

4 away goals? Very cool for Cyprus!

I wonder if Cyprus have ever scored 4 away goals in a competitive game?

Bulgaria were highly ordinary with their version of Chris Kirkland in goal but England were ok. I'm sure a sizeable part of this was everyone actually playing in their correct positions tonight, something as Derek says will probably be ruined when Lampard comes back.

They talk about Gerrard being England's best player and perhaps he is the most influential and has the greatest capacity for match winning, but yes, for me Ashley Cole is pound for pound the best player in that squad.

He was effortlessly good tonight. Gerrard was decent, Defoe and Rooney had good games, so did Milner and Hart. The downsides, well Barry is slowing up so much we are going to experience negative inertia on a football pitch with him pretty soon. Glenn Johnson was pretty erratic as ever. The central defenders were not really tested as they came up against a forward line that was slower and less mobile than they were. It must have been like playing against Stoke, without the WWF brutality.

Any word on that horrible looking Dawson injury?

Ursus : France lost to Slovakia in a friendly at the SDF in 2005 or 2006, and against us (blimey!) in 2002, but these were friendlies, so I suppose you're talking "competitive" games.

Belgium lost 1-0 in Brussels vs Germany, we deserved a draw but "Big Dan" Van Buyten had other ideas... I don't know why this cunt is stil playing for us. Must be a different bloke from the one playing for FC Bayern.
This blunder must be at least his 5th point-costing error for our soon-to-be-disappeared joke of a country.

ursus arctos wrote:
Wonderful spin, mon pote.

That trip to Sarajevo on Tuesday looks a bit daunting.

Ursus, do you really think I should be worried about France not being one of the 24 countries in Polkraine'12? Would you be willing to bet on this? (I'd love to oblige...)

linus, only 16 teams in Polkraine. 24 is the next competition.

Thanks Etienne. That's still a pretty comfortable threshold.

Harry Truscott wrote:
[quote]Broken Clock wrote:
[quote]Ek weet nie wrote:
Ha ha ha! How much of the Sunderland players' wages do you think you pay compared to the chairman, sponsors and Sky?

I was attempting to say that the fans are the most important people in the equation.
I pay less and less every year as I now seemto attend more away gams than home.

Broken Clock wrote:
[quote]Harry Truscott wrote:
[quote]Broken Clock wrote:
Ek weet nie wrote:
Ha ha ha! How much of the Sunderland players' wages do you think you pay compared to the chairman, sponsors and Sky?

I was attempting to say that the fans are the most important people in the equation.
.

And it's the fans who are most disadvantaged by Friday night qualifiers.

It's pretty good for small clubs, who don't lose fans to Ingerlund and instead have the chance to get fans of Premiership and Championship clubs along who have no other football to watch.

Not that such noble reasons were why UEFA did it.

The same could be said of Saturday evening kick-offs, surely?

Did FL gates improve measurably yesterday, do we know?

Actually, how successful was the Non-League Day?

Southern League Div 1, Central's average gate was down 125/139. But that's probably because most of the best supported clubs were playing away. Hitchin — first in the division and in attendance — had 338, two above average, against North Greenford, who apparently couldn't even provide a man and his dog in support. That's probably 25 to 50 more than might have been expected on a normal Saturday. A few Arsenal replica tops spotted in the crowd which suggests some lookee-loos were there.

We did fuck all for it and got fuck all. Sutton had a promotion for FL-PL season ticket holders and got a 35% jump on their average gate.

Saturday night games are fine for small clubs but I'm sure a lot of England games have kicked off at 15:00 or even 17:30 recently which is a problem. Plus if you're away to somewhere in Eastern Europe, even an evening kickoff local time can encroach on the afternoon in England.