It's not even worth wasting much time on. Lawrenson has no real grasp on European football outside of the usual suspects of Messi, Ronaldo etc. It's embarrassing to say something as stupid as that but it's Lawrenson, he's been mumbling nonsense for years now.

A draw would be a good result for England, although I suspect there will be a lot of 'fans' still giving England a hard time even if they managed that.

I don't know why everyone's hyping the hell out of Uruguay, they're prefectly beatable.

everyones better than england no matter what!

its ok for big team to have poor friendlies, they will still be great

but if england do it its end of the world.

None of Italy's team ? He's probably right..apart from their keeper, almost their entire back four, De Rossi, Pirlo, Balotelli....

Forget friendlies and warm-up games, Italy can never be arsed in those. When it comes to the competition proper, they usually find a way to progress. They are street-wise and experienced with some gifted players. I think we can beat them, but not by flying out of the blocks from the start and throwing caution to the wind. We have to be smart and retain the ball, which has not been one of our strengths in the past.

Nope... none of them are good enough to make the England squad.

I think England are in with a good shout here and I reckon that they will get out of the group at Italy's expense. I agree with people saying that Milner should be placed on Pirlo to prevent him from running the game and then use the pace of players like Sturridge and Sterling to kill them on the counter.

How do Italy line up formation wise?

Its just the sort of comments that will be all over the Italian press tomorrow like it would be here if a overseas guy said "England are useless"

Joking aside, they are stronger as a team than the sum of their parts. They have partnerships forged at Juventus in the centre of defence and in midfield, they know each others game inside-out. This was evident in the last Euros, they were much stronger as a unit than many people predicted.

Don't forget Pirlo though. He was the superstar of Euro 2012.

I think a 0-0 draw is the most likely result given the conditions expected and the fact that it's the opening game. I don't think either team will go all out for victory in the hot and humid weather.

It being our opening game is irrelevant, we have Uruguay in our group. Essentially trying to play for a draw and holding back, against a team like Italy is not good enough. It will be hot and humid throughout the competition, so never going all out for victory would be ridiculous. I think this is the problem with England. We do what we think is just enough to scrape through the competition, rather than going for it.

If Hodgson is playing for a draw, I think that is a mistake. If Italy, England and Uruguay all play for draws, that'd leave them all struggling to get through the group, relying on goal difference, providing they can all beat Costa Rica of course. And that'd be assuming Italy hold back in the first place. We've all seen what happens to England when they decide to play on the back foot. I for one do not want to watch 90 minutes of shots being rained down on us because we held back.

I could understand playing for a draw if Italy were the only decent team in group D, then going for wins against the weaker teams, but we also have Uruguay to contend with, so it doesn't make sense to play for a draw. Italy and Uruguay aren't really the types of team I would be confident England can hold back for 90 minutes, especially with our defence the way it is right now. England should play to their strengths. We look good going forward, I don't think we should sit back against any team, we need to start going for wins.

Looks like we're going to have 2-minute water breaks at the 30th and the 75th minutes

Sensible to sort these things out beforehand

Forster

Johnson Smalling Jones Shaw

Cahill

Milner Gerrard Lampard Rooney

Welbeck

A blend of youth and experience.

Cahill acting as an anchor/continental sweeper, allowing Gerrard and Lampard to crack on forward.

The young backline wouldn't carry the burden of expectation. Rooney can operate on the left as demonstrated and Welbeck doesn't let England down. Milner provides defensive cover for Johnson.

I assume no seriousness is to be took from this post.

Do pundits just lose their sense around WC time and get carried away on hype? Or maybe the paper just pay him to say whatever they want to hype things up? "Here's a grand Lawro. This week you are saying how Wilshere is the 3rd best player in the world. We've written the piece up for you. Do you need to check it? No - thought not."

Lawro is Irish, isn't he? You'd think he'd have a bit of perspective. It baffles me that anyone who watches a lot of football could seriously think what that article says.

I hate these group stages, will we ever get a tournament where the last game is not so important because we've won the first 2 games. Our tournaments always seem to hang on last games and other's results.

This would be my guess. Saying stuff he surely can't believe makes for cracking clickbait.

He's Irish when it suits him, same as Andy Townsend.

2002 was the most frustrating case. 4 points after 2 games meant we only needed a draw to finish second, so we had a 90 minute 0-0 kick about with Nigeria who we outranked by about 30 places. We could easily have won but Sven didn't want to risk a loss. If we'd won the group we would never have had Brazil in the quarters and would have had an easy ride to semis. Winning the group is important!

those Lawro comments just remind me of one of the reasons I usually end up rooting against England. for a start, football is never played on paper, so even if you do misguidedly think you've got the better players from 1-11, it's utterly meaningless, especially when your team spends 85% of matches looking like they've just met.

furthermore, it's Italy....show some bloody respect FFS! they've won the World Cup 4 times, so I'd say they have some idea of how to compete in these things. where exactly does this air of superiority about an England team that are repeatedly found wanting against exactly that sort of opposition come from? same thing in 2010 the day before the Germany game. all the talk from 'Arry and the rest on the Beeb was "how many of the Germans would get into our team?", only for them to have their pants well and truly pulled down 24 hours later. these guys just never learn.

Why get irritated by it? It's just nationalistic, tub-thumping for simpletons.

The vast majority of actual football fans don't think like that. Of course there are Italian players who would get into the England team, it's beyond obvious.

I would stake at least five pounds on Mark Lawrenson not believing a word of it himself. Two pounds says he didn't even write it.

It should be remembered that plenty of World Cup finals have been held in hot countries (in fact the majority have been) and they haven't all resulted in many cagey games.

Besides, isn't this game being played in the evening, Brazil-time?

England have got a fair number of young players with pace and energy. Really don't see why we shouldn't be able to cope physicallly

The weather is no excuse. In the past we've been to Mexico twice, Argentina, Brazil once before, Uruguay and South Africa, they're all very hot!

Besides, whenever we have a heatwave we're always going on about how "it's hotter here than Majorca/Miami/the surface of the Sun/wherever. Time to put our money where our mouth is.

In fairness, Raheem Sterling probably didn't get out to Mexico that first time.