Which year/s??

2014.

Rooney is one of the most over rated players ever! He never performs at all well for England.

Let's not go too silly now. Narrow disappointing defeats against the team that finished fourth last time and the 2006 world champions, let's not start throwing ourselves off bridges and screaming blue murder.

Suirely the teams that didn't reach the Finals in the late 70's were, actually, better than this lot? How would you like Allan Clarke up front??

The team four years ago was worse, it's a shame that we have still have a couple from then in the squad who are undroppable.

At least we have qualified this time, unlike 1974 where we somehow failed to qualify from a group containing Poland and Wales.

Plenty of decent players in the 50's,60's, 70's and 80's been downhill since Euro 96.

I'm not sure if this is our worst team ever, but it's certainly the worst we've had in a very long time.

We're usually pretty strong at the back, but we don't even have that anymore. This team is very, very ordinary and I don't think any manager could do much with it to be honest.

It sums up English Premier League football and its English players. What else can we expect!

We have been in worse positions than this before, we didn't qualify for the 74 or 78 World Cups or USA 94, at least we got there this time and have narrowly lost to two good teams, yes we are in a mess but we have a lot of young players who will only improve in the future and i think we will improve in time.

On talent or performance? Weren't the 70s meant to be a bit of a nightmare for England internationally?

Please correct..but in the 70's weren't there only 16 teams in th Worlds so the qualifying was harder? Anyone confirm??

Poland were superb at that time. Came 3rd in 1974.

Uruguay were good? I thought they flat out average at best.

Graham Taylor era was terrible

not quite the worst ever, there have been times when England have failed to even qualify for the world cup.

As I wrote above, it was actually harder to qualify when they didn't as I think it's only (fairly) recently that 16 teams became 32.


.....although Scotland (and NI once) managed

1974 - 98 entrants, 16 finalists.
1978 - 100 entrants, 16 finalists.
2014 - 208 entrants, 32 finalists.

Whether that equates to harder or easier I don't know. You'd have to know how strong the opposing teams were, how many European sides qualify versus other continents and how that has changed down the years, etc, etc. In any case...I never said whether it was harder or easier, I just asked whether the 70s were generally considered to have been a nightmare for England internationally. That is my general perception but I wasn't around so I asked hoping someone would have more insight if they were around at the time.

In terms of the group stage it is the worst performance of all time.

England have never lost games 1 and 2 of the group stage. It's happened in this tournament. This was mentioned on ITV directly after the match so I assume this is correct information.

As someone wrote earlier, despite Clough's rantings Poland were, actually, one of the best sides in the world (certainly their golden generation) so England were unlucky that only one of the two would qualify.

How did they end up in that position? Did they both finish runner ups in groups and have to play off against each other or did they have a different qualifying system?

(I've started googling it. Already amazed how good Scotland apparently were then! Yep, that was a very weird qualifying format - a 3 team group.)

So were England a strong team mid 70s then?

Oh look, another broken record.

1 goal and 1 assist. Remind us what Captain Marvel has done.


Naive in attack, hopeless in defence, and as much protection in midfield as a horny Catholic.


And Martin Lipton said Hodgson's reign has been a success HAHA. What a ****.

Three teams in the qualifying group (Eng/Pol/Wales) and only one went through.

You b*stard, I've been trying to forget that period ever happened.