Vardy would be the first name on the sheet for any other country, I think.

Scandalous not picking him.

We should be beating that Russian team but we didn't, sometimes football doesn't always go in favour of the team that on paper is better.

Wales will be going into that match buoyant, whereas we are coming off a poor result, plus they can always call upon the considerable talent that is Bale, whereas we do not have anyone near to his abilities.

I doubt that it will be as easy as some think.

I think Roy is managing him fine. He could have brought him on with twenty minutes to go but he felt that the team would score a second goal

Not sure about that but he should have come on yesterday once Russia had to push forward. And given Kane's tired performance, I'd start Vardy ahead of him against Wales

I think perhaps Sturridge if fit, should be involved in the match, as he does have a fair bit of skill that Vardy doesn't.

As in not putting him on?

Possibly cost England the game.

I think what cost us the game is not defending that cross properly which led to the goal,
before that we were doing fine

I see. Fair enough.

These factors have no influence over what you said though. Ive quoted your post below. It won't be "an almighty task" to beat Wales any more now than it was yesterday. England aren't playing catch up at all, both sides have still to ply the team the other one has played and they play each other next game. "catch up" couldn't be more meaningless and Wales being top is irrelevant. Its only a four team group with each team playing each other once for goodness sake.


Your crushing negativity about England over the last 24 hours is incredibly OTT as is your repeated and repeated and repeated lambasting of Sterling who it seams to me simply had a fairly poor game.

Anyone who has watched tournament football of this nature which I presume you have will know that this result is far from catastrophic. Disappointing yes, but hardly the end of the world. Look at the opening games of Italia 90 and Euro 96 for evidence. Obviously a win would have been better but England actually played some decent stuff, its not like they were outplayed for 90 mins. There is every reason to believe that a half decent result is possible in the next two matches.

Lets not get silly about this the performance was good. Joe Hart had very little to do and we coukd have been 3-0 up but for some amazing goalkeeping/ uncomposed finishing. I really would not panic. It was the first game and a draw is not the worst result. You cannot win every game 5-0 and get better, you learn more when you make mistakes and in tournament football, its better to make these mistakes now than in the latter stages where you do not get another chance. BRING ON WALES!!

Pretty certain Portugal would be picking Ronaldo first...

As a Tottenham supporter, I am baffled more than most at why Kane is taking set pieces. He rarely takes ours and having him take them is taking away the threat he poses at the other end of them. It wasn't his best game in terms of goal scoring, obviously, but he was still being Kane, getting involved, closing down, working hard. Thought Rose, Walker, Dier and Alli played well.

I thought Lallana played quite well too, which I wasn't expecting.

Better defending from the CBs and Hart for their goal, and we'd have won. I don't know why Rose, possibly the smallest man left on the pitch, was left to mark two or three players.

The game was crying out for Vardy/Sturridge/Rashford but because of the kind of manager Hodgson is, as soon as we went 1-0 up, he was only ever going to try and see the game out.


Lamela and Eriksen take our corners. Kane takes the odd free kick every now and then, but I can't remember the last time he took a corner for us. I'm not sure he ever has.

I would have thought that the explosion should have been sufficient reason to stop the match there and then.

My view is that it should be replayed without life threatening distractions behind closed doors.

Just to add to my previous post as I can't edit it now, apparently he took seven corners for us across the whole of last season, which is the same number he took against Russia alone. I genuinely can't remember any of them.

I was hoping for once, that England could go to a tournament and win all their groups games, and not have the usual "must win game, or if the other team loose and we win" scenario. But thats gone out of the window, and now Thursdays game is a must win. Because I can see Slovakia being a tough game, especially the way they tackle, it will give us little time to recover, should we go through.

I'm still puzzled how the officials came up with 3 minutes of added time and so were the majority of people I was watching with, we worked it out as a 1 minute at the most, certainly not 3, oh well too late to worry about that now.

Each substitution adds 30 seconds for a start...

Not complaining but has Dier ever taken direct FKs for Spurs?

I have seen Walker and Rose take some but never him! In fact he was probably one of the last people i thought would take it after Rooney, Kane, Lallana, Walker, Alli and Milner (cant remember if he was subbed on by then)

No, he's never taken one for us. Kane, Vertonghen and Walker have all taken the odd one - Walker scored a beautiful outswinging one for us once against Blackburn, and also a low one against Man United. I can't recall Rose ever taking one? It's usually Lamela or Eriksen who take them though, same with the corners as mentioned before.

I thought the commentator/pundit mentioned it was a career first Dier scoring directly from a free kick.

It worked out great, but why on earth would Roy want people who have never taken corners/free kicks at club level to suddenly start doing so at international level, instead of using the players who habitually do this for their clubs

I doubt anyone can come up with a persuasive explanation as to why Kane was taking the corners. I thought it was borderline nuts and I am being generous.

Is it some sort of weird strategy to dumbfound the opposition? Whatever it is, all it's doing is failing and dumbfounding us!!