Well I think at the moment Sam Allardyce is in a position similar to Brian Clough.

He is in the top one

Same reason he got the United job. Well connected.

Cristiano Ronaldo has been suggested in another thread. I'll go with that Has the England manager ever taken his shirt off after a game?

I asked you why you'd have Laudrup when you previously said giving the job to Hiddink would be rewarding failure.

Saying we have a poor pool to select from is not justifying your opinion. It is not explaining why Laudrup is a better candidate than Hiddink. It's giving a separate opinion. There's a difference.


Why didn't you say that in the first place? When asking why Laudrup would be a better choice than Hiddink, all I was asking is for you to tell me why Laudrup would be a better choice than Hiddink.

Wanting Laudrup is fine, wanting him for the way he coaches, his style of football or his age is fine. Wanting him over Hiddink is fine. It's when you suggest him after shooting down other people's suggestions of Hiddink, saying it's rewarding failure that it causes an issue when your suggestion is no different in that sense, except for the fact that Hiddink has actually won stuff that matters, even if it hasn't been recently.

The winner against Wales may've been near the end but we had already equalised only a few minutes into the second half and crucially we played well. What I don't understand is why we played well against them and Russia too when arguably both along with Slovakia should've been tougher games than Iceland. Going by your second paragraph do you think the reason we played better against Wales and beat them was because we didn't take them for granted unlike against Iceland?

I think the Wales game was more like a derby game, all of the players knew each other, and so there was a bit of personal pride at stake, perhaps in the England looker room there might have been the opinion that "we can't let Wales beat us!", and so the drive and determination was there right until the end.

Whereas against Russia and especially, Slovakia and Iceland, I fear that there was an arrogant opinion if, "all we have to do is play our stuff and we will win, they have nothing for us to be afraid of.", amd hence why that was our downfall, we were shocked to find the latter two making it hard for us, and not just allowing us almost to score.

Our arrogance was our undoing big time I think.

I don't think there was any evidence to suggest England were arrogant at all. Id suggest the opposite was true especially against Iceland, the players looked fairly terrified altogether. Perhaps a bit of arrogance would have been a good thing.

harry putting himself forward in the media again

talk about deluded, its laughable

A little bit of that. I don't know if the England team took Iceland for granted but I think a large part of the fans and media did and that's always asking for trouble. For whatever reason, they looked drained of confidence once Iceland hit back.

I think there was a bust up behind the scenes too bigger than reported and it maybe had a knock-on effect on morale. I know the media made mention of the FA not being happy with the team picked for Slovakia, and hinted at other sources of unhappiness. I've no evidence of it being a bigger issue than reported but it's the impression I got from it all. Maybe there was a massive bust up immediately post-Slovakia and from then on the team spirit, confidence and everything else was shot?

Or maybe they just got out fought and out played on the night, saw the headlines after everyone saying they would win, and couldn't respond positively?

I don't know. My feelings are Iceland are/were better than some people made out and had shown that in the past, England aren't at the top level and are always vulnerable against anyone in knockout competition, and there seemed to be something off about the lack of response to the equaliser. There was effort, of course, but they looked very lacking in belief to my untrained eye.

I think we were looking past Iceland and concentrating on a potential match with France, I don't think we put much thought into the Iceland match bar turning up and expecting them to roll over for us.

It certainly looked like we didn't do much training to combat their long throws, why not have a guy stand near the throw in taker to at least affect it??

We just took our eye off of Iceland and boy did it cost us big time.

Probably more like desperate to be someone again

They should have gone for Rednapp over Hodgson.

a bank account in a dogs name stopped that, not even the FA are that stupid

You're probably right there. It wouldn't surprise me if arrogance was the reason. I certainly can't think of any other reason why we played so badly against Iceland and to a lesser extent, Slovakia.
If indeed it was arrogance then I hope the one positive consequence of our Iceland defeat is that we never again take ANY opponent for granted ever again, regardless of how "easy" they appear to be on paper.

It just seemed to be all about the possibility (or more than that) of playing France, that was what was being talked about in the run up to the Iceland game, hardly anything was about actually how we would go about beating them, and hence we got beat fairly comfortably (if anything Iceland deserved to score more than they did).

We showed an out of date attitude, and we got severely punished for it.

Hopefully we will learn from this, but I will not be holding my breath that is for sure.

It was ineptitude rather than arrogance.

Either way it cost us big time.

Either way, it was ineptitude.

Brendan Rodgers ? Doing a great job at Celtic, but they might be willing to let him go.

Hopefully that ship has long since sailed.

Wes Morgan plays for Jamaica actually..

Whoops, thanks for the correction, I was a little bit closer than Harry

Slight irony in having a go at Harry and then getting it wrong yourself though, no?

No not really, I have no desire to be the England manager nor do I write a newspaper column, I just post on a forum. The important thing is I knew he couldnt play for England.

Steve Bruce was interviewed by the FA, yesterday. According to the Beeb.