England Senior National Team General Discussion Thread

Come again?? You prefer Scott?? Are you talking about needing Scott as another number 8 rather than taking another 10 as surely you don’t mean you rate Scott higher?

 

Next he’ll be saying Delap over Kane!

 

Give it time.

 

How much time, presumably when Kane retires?

 

Depends how excitable I feel really. Mood swings and all that.

 

Here are your draw pots for the World Cup finals.

Australia in Pot 2 and Norway in Pot 3?

Draw info: https://t.co/4q3GDrH53y pic.twitter.com/4zC6jpoMca

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) November 18, 2025

Pots for the World Cup draw. The Aussies look very out of place in pot 2, although I can't claim to have watched them lately and they were very resolute in 2022 tbf to them.

Wouldn't mind a rematch with Uruguay from 2014 personally. Wouldn't mind playing the Aussies either for a game with a bit of narrative.

 

The thing with the Asian teams is the heavyweights always end up with high rankings because all the low standards of the confederation, making it easy to farm ranking points for the top teams. Hence you have iran who are a solid enough but very unspectacular side ranked 21st in the world.

Pot 2 is pretty uniform outside the non Japan Asian teams. No top sides but all very capable of causing a surprise. Pot 3 likewise is uniform of fairly mediocre sides outside norway who are definitely the team to avoid.

Pot 4 is where strange things can start to happen, the quality of teams there is wildly varying owing to play off teams not being seeded. You certainly wouldn't want to draw Turkey, Denmark, or Italy. On the other hand there's going to be some of the weakest sides to have ever played a modern day world cup there.

 

Harvey Barnes google search last night 'what is a kilt?'

 

The draw is unbalanced by virtue of Canada being in Pot 1. They would be Pot 3 at best normally.
That would move Croatia and Norway up one, and it then looks pretty reasonable.
Here''s to the US getting drawn with Croatia, Norway and Bolivia.

 

We probably need to try and organise a friendly with a better side than Uruguay for March. They just got beaten 5-1 by a US team resting a number of players.

 

Ideally we should be trying to arrange a friendly with Argentina, we haven't played top opposition since the euros so ideally one of the friendlies will be a top side, and ideally we would also face a South American shithousing side to get reaquinted to those antics. Might as well tick it off in one box. They have the finalissima scheduled but presumably will play another game.

Colombia would also be a interesting choice given their form these past couple of years.

 

Unfortunately the FA won’t travel anymore and many countries expect a reverse friendly to be agreed for a couple of years time.

 

It’s been said the FA refuse to pay Argentina’s fee for a friendly. Angola paid $10 million for the pleasure. Argentina are well known for charging the most for a friendly,

Colombia would be better option than Uruguay.

 

We need to await the draw document as there is speculation elsewhere that the play off teams will be seeded by the ranking of the highest ranked team in each pathway.

 

That could make the draw even more unbalanced if Italy’s path are seeded pretty high but then Nothern Ireland for example qualifies instead.

 

Barcelona are closely monitoring Crystal Palace defender Marc Guehi, 25, but Liverpool are still favourites to sign the England international. (Cadena SER - in Spanish)

Talks between Manchester United and Kobbie Mainoo over a new contract have been put on hold as the 20-year-old England midfielder eyes a loan move to Napoli in January in search of more playing time. (Calciomercato - in Italian, external)

Manchester United are watching Guehi's situation with interest ahead of him becoming a free agent this summer with limited progress made in talks over Harry Maguire's contract - Mail Sport.

 

i would be pretty surprised if that were true otherwise you are basically potentially rewarding a team for going through the playoffs. It'd be kind of farcical if Norway go as third seeds, and whoever wins Italy's play off is guaranteed top seeds.

Of course much of this is also wider issues with the current fifa world rankings and how slow they are to adapt to change (though still better than previous systems)

 

The, pretty reliable, X feed Football Meets Data say they have been passed a provisional draw document which outlines what I posted - they've posted an excerpt online and why they trust it.

Either way the draw is potentially unbalanced. We'll know soon enough.

 

Australia, Scotland and Ireland. A possibilty, can you imagine!

 

It would list Germany down to Pot 2 which I suspect would not go down well in Germany at all.

 

It wouldn't. Germany have overtaken Italy.

 

In which Italy would be Pot 2? The BBC have Germany had the lowest ranked Pot 1team.

 

Italy would be pot 2. Their ranking is now below Germany's, or will be when the latest rankings are announced today.

 

Yeah I'd take a game against Colombia. The FA are probably waiting for the WC draw to be done before making a move on these games.

 

Just on the point about the squad and who to take, who to leave out... I'd always want to have Palmer available if he's fit, has played some football and has shown some decent form. The guy's a game-changer, as he's shown on several occasions, both for club and country.

I know we're maybe scratching about for places in that role but I'd be more confident in him coming on if we're down 2-1 with 10 mins left than with some of the other options.

I'm not talking about starting him necessarily... but as an option I think you need someone mercurial like that to change the game dynamic.

Just my 02 cents