You may be right but Welbeck has been terrific so far for me plus he plays with Rooney and I don't think you can underestimate the importance of rapport between players. They've created enough opportunities for themselves this season so I'd be a bit loathe to keep Carroll in when we'd do well to concentrate on picking them off on the break, similar to what United do very well.



Agreed. With all the talk of defensive approaches and "Capello was doing the same thing", the one thing that shone yesterday was spirit. I've seen far too many English teams capitulate or run out of ideas when the opposition has scored. Being a goal up to one behind would normally signal trouble but the players rose to the challenge yesterday, particularly Roy of the Rovers, and it was very pleasing to see. It's something we could have done many years ago if various managers had realised you can't play Gerrad and Lampard in the same team. Like Peter Reid in '86 and Gascoigne in '90, injuries/suspensions may have given us the prompts we needed to go for it instead of resting on international experience.

Fair point Hart could have come and got to it. but what were our centre halfs doing, Lescott was stood marking himself at the back post. Neither of them got stuck in where it counted and seemed to shy away from their responsibilities in dealing with the threat that Zlaten posed throughout the game.

russia out and greece go through, unbelievable scenes.

That should serve as a warning to england that, going into the final game only needing a draw (like russia) is by no means a gimme. This will be against a host nation needing to win to go through.

It's going to be tough

Best wishes to the Ukrainian boys then.

No, totally different. Welbeck plays on the shoulder and Rooney drop's deep(too deep at times). I think it's harsh to leave Carol out to be fair as she played very well against Sweden. Out of the three strikers, he is quite far behind the other two in terms of ability.

Sorry I forgot, you think Welbeck is biz.

Not biz, just overrated by you and most United fans.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic: "I don't give a who wins it now. I'm going on holiday."
Andrei Arshavin to Russian fans in the airport: "It's not our problem we didn't meet your expectations. It's your problem".

Doing the game proud.

Why do they persist with this head to head crap? Far more complicated than GD imo.

Whats wrong with what he said?

Why should he care? Its only right he gets a holiday before the league season starts

I think their reasoning is that because there are only 3 games, and one of those games could be against a side who just want to go home, it's better to go with head to heads. I agree with them actually.

For example, Holland could just sit down tonight and let Portugal score a hat full of goals. Denmark could work themselves to death to get a 1-0 win against Germany. It would obviously be unfair for Portugal's stroll to be the deciding factor over who goes through.

Whoever comes out of Group B must fancy their chances against either Greece or The Czech Republic in the quarter finals.

Another exciting night where anything could happen in the group. Still can't believe that UEFA plan to wreck the Euro's by adding 8 extra teams next time round. The format should be left alone.

More countries competing means more money for UEFA. You cannot expect the governing body to put the good of the sport before finances.

Bet Scotland still won't qualify when its expanded either

Quote ="Conroy"Why do they persist with this head to head crap? Far more complicated than GD imo.'" GD is too easy to fix. For example: sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slu ... cup_021012

Quote ="Conroy"Why do they persist with this head to head crap? Far more complicated than GD imo.'" GD is too easy to fix. For example: sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slu ... cup_021012

They had to do something after England failed to qualify for '08.

Cant see that it will do much for the tv revenues for the qualifying stage.

I agree with expanding it but not to 24.

I think you could add another 4 teams into it without diluting the quality (Belguim, Switzerland, Turkey, Serbia for example), but making it 24 will do

Scotland qualifying would probably be the best thing that could ever happen to UEFA.
The amount of fans that would travel would probably be unrivalled, what with it possibly being their only tournament for a few decades!

how will the groups work i wonder?

will there be extra groups, or more teams per group?

World Cups from 1986-1994 had 6 groups of 4. Top 2 qualified with the 4 best 3rd placed teams for the last 16, think they're planning on using that format

How many England fans are at the Euros? Appears to be only around 5k from what I've heard, this must be the least for about 30 years?

To be fair they have about 50000 on the hooligans banned list.

A banana was thrown on to the pitch in a racist attack by Croatia fans during the Euro 2012 match against Italy. As of yet, no action taken.
Spain's fans have been self-policing, claiming fellow supporters made monkey chants at Italy forward Mario Balotelli during the match in Gdansk. Still no action taken by UEFA.
As UEFA put it, "isolated incidents of racist chanting" aimed at Netherlands players during an open training session for Euro 2012. No action yet taken.
The Croatian FA fined €25,000 (£20,170) for its fans' behaviour at the match against Ireland. Uefa said the sanction was imposed for "throwing of fireworks and missiles, and a pitch invasion by a supporter".

Denmark's Nicklas Bendtner banned for one competitive game and fined €100,000 within five days of showing bookmaker's logo on his undercrackers.

Porto fined €20000 for racial abuse of Mario Balotelli in February.
Russia fined £96000 for its fans beating up stewards.

It really is a disgrace.