......................kane ...rashford................Ali ...........lallana...winks Rose...........................walker .........stones...dier....Gomez ....................butland Quite like the balance here. Dier can step to dm and we can go 433, especially if u swap Ali for sterling
Mourinho furious with England. Said today that Phil Jones was given 6 pain killing injections before the friendly against #GER, then went off injured and is out of tomorrow’s game v #NUFC. Says he’s never encountered that in 17 years of management #MUFC #ENG— James Ducker (@TelegraphDucker) November 17, 2017 I have to wonder if this is accurate? Can't believe Southgate and the FA would risk such a move for just a friendly if it's true. Will be interesting to see how many pull out for the next round of friendlies for the Netherlands and Italy games in March.
I wouldn't mind Australia to be honest, a game we should win however with Iceland still haunting me and the uncertainty over Southgates selections, I would be nervous as hell, lol.
We've actually never faced them in a proper tournament, only friendlies: http://www.englandfootballonline.com/Opp/OppAus.html I wouldn't mind. Might not be an easy game though - as you can see, we've never beaten them by more than a single goal.
It does seem improbable that Southgate/the medical staff would have knowingly taken a significant risk given how willing they were to let players with minor issues skip the squad altogether.
Ideally I would want a really top opponent for the first game to get us up to speed, and then two of the weakest sides to follow.
Because the next two games were against Suarez's Uruguay and the surprise best team in the group - Costa Rica. They were not two of the weakest other teams we could have gotten, they were two of the strongest.
#MUFC defender Chris Smalling was "surprised" by his England omission & Gareth Southgate's comments about his ability to bring it out from the back. Decent response pic.twitter.com/YrKRZBjfRc— Simon Peach (@SimonPeach) November 21, 2017
Come the World Cup, I bet hes Southgates first name on the team sheet The England CM debate is officially over. pic.twitter.com/rqfyTDDkUx— Sunday League Hipster (@HipsterManager) November 21, 2017
We outplayed Costa Rica because they're strategy would be to get a goal and grind out the result. Uruguay gave us a lot of problems, but we so did we to them.
Looking at the pots and trying to remember the last world cup draw, I'm sure, with us being in pot 2 we will take up the A2,B2,C3 etc spot in the group (team from Pot 1 go into spot A1, pot 3, goes into A3 and pot 4 go into A4). Our fixtures would then be A1 (Top seed) v England A4 (Bottom seed) v England England v A3
They draw the team and then draw a place number. http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/y=2017/m=11/news=the-final-draw-how-it-works-2921565.html
Hey why do English media want to be grouped with us (Iran)? We are considered a dark horse in the WC by a lot of football experts. A semi-final appearance is our target in Russia. Please remember Iran almost beat Argentina in 2014. Just look up our squad. Iran is full of talents who are quite successful in the world's best leagues such as Russia, Netherlands, Belgium and Greece. Watch out for Azmoun who is dominating the Russian league. He is easily the best player in Asia beating the likes of Son Heung-Min and Ki Sung-Yueng.
Does the media want that? I wouldn't see Iran as the weakest team in pot 3. Probably not the strongest either but could be dark horses, as you say.
This is the third tournament in a row that I go into having very little idea of how we are going to approach the tournament. So the draw becomes pretty much irrelevant. I think tactically our approach to individual opponents is going to be poor. So if our overall approach has been hard to comprehend and our coach is limited tactically does even matter who we draw?
I honestly don’t care who we get. We’ve messed up easier groups so I lean towards Not being too bothered. I don’t trust Southgate either and dread him taking Livermore or starting with a Henderson - dier midfield.. For me, Lallana has to play and I’m not sure if I like 3 at the back as I like having Sterling Alli and Kane in attack which leaves only two in midfield, one of which is certain to be Dier, which means only one of Lallana/winks/RLC can start. Diamond would be ideal
I've just been casually browsing around and I've noticed that the World Cup draw seems to be exciting people from 'other' nations, like everybody else in England I couldn't really give a rats a*se about it and its got me thinking.......I am still soooooooo angry with FIFA that I honestly couldn't really care less about the tournament let alone the bloody draw and everybody I know has the same malaise. Apparantly ticket sales for English fans is exceptionally poor (particularly compared to previous tournaments), do you think that Lineaker has been drafted in to try and revive interest in the UK? Is everybody else on here a bit 'meh' about this particular tournament? (I'm even more 'meh' about Qatar, in fact I will be thoroughly p*ssed off if they interrupt the Premier League for it and would probably even prefer if England didn't even qualify for that one)
Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece do not have some of the world's best leagues, far from it. There's no doubt some ignorance amongst the British press about how good Iran are, but dark horses for the tournament? Let's be realistic. It would be far-fetched to call England that, let alone Iran.
Azmoun isn't dominating the Russian league either. He hasn't scored in 17 games this season, as a striker. Does seem to do a lot better for Iran though.
I guess if we're thinking of our prospects of advancing, a good draw would be a strong team from Pot 1 and weak teams from Pots 3 and 4. The last thing we want is the third- and fourth-pot teams in the group taking points off the first and drawing us all closer to the threshold. Something like: Germany England Tunisia Panama ...would be nice.