enigmatic

Was he ever on?

At last a use of technology in sport we can all get behind. Proving Piers wrong Now do we have the technology to prove Aubameyang should have left earlier and Wenger should have stayed

Wurzburger Kickers. | 3. Liga Opening | 2022/23 Germany is always a fun place to do this challenge, especially if you like fast starts, loans and not being broke all the time Wurzburger Kickers are one of the bigger clubs which can be promoted from the German Regionalliga. The team suffered back to back relegations from 2 Bundesliga before the start of the game but has a decent core squad, and good income from sponsorship (seriously, Germans want big wages but a £3.6m annual wage budget is absolutely huge in a challenge like this). A few other strong sides to attempt this challenge with in Germany, but I really like this squad*: it's mainly young, not that bloated and the one place it needs a serious upgrade is defence (and since I'm picky about defenders, I much prefer bringing in my own). I also have a reserve squad with a couple of amateurs and miserable transfer listed players, and a single (rubbish) youth product The token veteran Hagele is still a very good player who will start as my captain, Zaiser looks promising in midfield whilst Sane is the best striker I have by some distance and is happy to renew his contract Wurzburg looks lovely too. Kevin Keller is Wurzburg's inexperienced new manager. The board have said he can start coaching courses if he sorts out training so it's not overstaffed, which is nice. The club has never won anything except local leagues, but did spend a fair bit of the last decade in Germany's second tier, so it feels like it could be a big club and has average facilities and a few thousand people turning up to watch each game. And that's before they've watched Kevin Keller's amazing football!

Don't think Gareth's ever worried about actually being consistent with his media pronouncements And yeah, obvious what he actually meant is "the game was tight and we weren't getting the ball anywhere near where Foden is most effective anyway"

I'm just here for @GunmaN1905 to say "bottled"

I'm not sure solidarity from the US is all that helpful to Iranian protestors, mind you...

imagine all the people.... in our back line against France

I love your optimism. Can't wait for you to be the only one in here celebrating when we win the bloody thing and everyone else is too busy being angry about team selection to care

Gareth obviously played a lot of FM22

Your dad is my dad (Also love him being completely convinced that his school team did more pressing than a bunch of elite athletes that spend half their week doing pressing drills) I mean, normally in group stages we absolutely thrash all our opponents, don't we? And we have such a good tournament record against the USA (Also, everyone screaming for Foden is like Baptista stanning for Grealish in every conceivable situations in the last tournament . Yes, Foden is great, no Foden is absolutely not the answer to the question "can you look less nervy at the back, transition a bit better and either hold the ball up or ruin them with pace". I'd have considered him at half time when it looked like what we were missing might just be final third quality, but in the middle of that second half when we couldn't even get the ball to the areas he's effective in?!?) Wales are not THAT bad. But yeah, Wales won't be as energetic as the USA, never mind beat us 4-0, which is the only way we don't go through

One of the best things about coming home is how the average England fan is going to be really annoyed by it

Did Italy's fans overreact this much

Or give away a needless free kick when the game was over if he left it....

Going to score a winner and do a knee slide too

Everyone knows the answer to that is still "bugger all". We have watched England before.

Sh.... We're not allowed to mention that Mount's been our best attacking player

just needs to win some free kicks so we can get the ball to their end of the pitch tbh - And I know Hendo is not everyone's favourite substitution, but the mind boggles that people are surprised that Bellingham is coming off; he's been as bad this game as he was good last game. That applies to a few attacking players, but he's the one supposed to be linking them and helping out defensively...

yeah. tbf I'm thinking "yeah, everyone hates the idea of using a water carrier instead of our attacking talent but when you need to steady the ship..." then I remember that I haven't watched him this season but I have seen Liverpool's results.

I was about to post, unironically, that he's probably been our best player. That's not exactly a compliment to the rest of the team, but he does have a massive head

If he supports their government he hates both sides equally. Seems fair

Even bigger scenes if it works and we start looking like favourites again

I'd wait for the USA to stop attacking us first

Especially in a group stage game with five subs and a wealth of talent on the bench - - Poor old Mount did get us a token shot on target

Think that flatters us. We're not playing boring possession football or sitting deep and waiting for them to give us the ball back, we're getting caught in possession and with runs in behind. Think our scout report said "these guys couldn't even beat Wales" and Gareth didn't do the warn against complacency team talk. But at this stage, we look like we should be making substitutions to make sure we eke out the 1-0 To be fair to the US, they've actually been pretty good rather than relying on us to be horribly bad.

I'm going for the middle prediction of a cagey 1-0 / 2-1 affair where we survive a major defensive alarm or two