Surfer

Get ready for an upset - my Liverpool supporting friends are already confidently predicting our thrashing.

I was at that Chelsea game too. Couldn't believe the ref made that call - many because we were winning the fog was pretty bad. Great write up Ricardo, the ground in early 70's was still unrestricted access from what I recall, we'd usually go to the River End but if it rained we'd slink around the corner to be under cover of the South Stand.

And two I'm not so sure about - they could both look pretty decent, and in Sunderland's case it's so much better than the one from two years ago when they were in the Champs.

And it's hard to mess up a striped shirt but West Brom and Southampton seem to have found a way.

It's the time of year that new kits get released and there are some stunningly bad ones this year. West Ham and Birmingham first of all -

Panic buy. Not good enough with the ball. Get rid. Cardiff, Forest, Derby must be interested.

So Southampton, West Ham and Chelsea for the drop then.

I’m waiting for a women’s team to adopt the Spanish short ball game, it would seem to be ideal for the physical attributes of most women footballers. Right now everyone wants to play like a men’s international team and either defend in depth or run the channels. The latter is being destroyed by bad decision making and poor passing and shooting skills. So it’s been mainly a series of games waiting for a mistake. Poor stuff so far then, although to be fair the Argentine goalkeeper has put the “no good goalkeepers” meme to rest, and the England goal was very well executed as well. More of that please as the competition continues.

Look this is why we need to adopt Leicester as our new rivals. Apart from also being the focus of their county, they play in Blue and stole our best player (OK we sold him to them) and a manager and hence a promotion; we can also point out that the major trophy that they won wasn't really an achievement after all. So unlike if we use Spurs or Wet Spam we can continue to have a proper chip on our shoulder about a similar sized team - always welcome - as the other lot down the road really have become irrelevant.

Just asking, but the county is called Pakistan. The land of the Pak(s) i.e. the pure. Like Afghanistan is the land of the Afghans. And Tajikistan is the land of the Tajiks. There is some discussion here : so like many things it's the intent behind the word that counts. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:Paki

Well I guess that is an argument against any kind of laws / rule at all. Nothing can be 100%

L1pswich I think until they get promoted again

One advantage of "bigger" goals is they should be able to score often than in the mens' game, and that might be seen as a positive difference - it certainly would here in the US, people are used to high scoring sports. The problem I see at the moment is not that the goalkeepers aren't any good (some are, some are not) but there is a very low probability of a shot going anywhere near on target. That problem should be solvable before they worry about reducing the size of the goals. Else they may finish up with a lot of 0-0's. ( US v Thailand an exception, but that was also a case of very poor sportsmanship, not unexpected from a US team unfortunately )

As much as watching these games is an enjoyable option now that our season is over, the problem is that the pretty constant demonstration of inability to shoot straight, to head or pass the ball where it needs to go, and consistently wrong decision making - even from the top teams - is jarring. That's nothing to do with the difference between men's v's women's physical abilities, more a reflection of the current level of footballing skills. That's unfortunate and it'll get better I am sure. Hopefully as the tournament progresses the remaining teams confidence will increase and the standard of play will rise along with that.

If we start with Spurs away I think that would be great. Beat them and be joint top would do nicely.

Did our Kenny touch the ball?

I may have misplaced a 1 in front of that 2 😪. Did the US not hear about the mercy rule? 13-0 shows that comprised of women or men, US sports teams have no sense of class.

Statistically Pukki has now failed to score more than 50% of his teams goals over the past 24 hours. Not sure that is a striker we need to lead our PL campaign.

Meanwhile back to the football... expecting the mighty USA to thrash Thailand at least 2-0 😪

How about we adopt Leicester City - they play in blue, are reasonably close to us geographically, and they wave won something recently. Oh and they stole our manager, a promotion and our best player too - O.K we sold him but so what, he was ours once.

He looked decent in the playoff games, but he's pretty short and lacking Holt's physicality. For us, I'd prefer Jack Marriott. Still only 24 and looked great for Derby when they put him on the pitch.

👍 That said, this NZ v Holland game has to be the best game so far. Focus on attacking, good skills, amazing it's still 0-0 at 60 min.

Well this is a sport - and many will enjoy watching it for what it is - but for TV it’s a branding exercise. You initially want exposure, but after that you want to make sure that you represent what the product really is, not over hype it, or you won’t be able to grow the audience to what it should be. Many in the potential audience are smarter than you may give them credit for, and once suckered in and seeing with their own eyes what it really is and still hearing the breathless hyped coverage they may then decide not to tune in again. So a balancing act for sure, but that is what I mean when I say the players don’t deserve this kind of hyped up coverage (maybe it’s US only) because ultimately it will limit their potential. (WTA &’WNBA seem to have worked this out)

Any news about Sean Raggett and the German dude we loaned out, oh and Grant Hanley too ? That’s three CB’s there as well as Z G and K.

True I’m also watching from US where the hype level may be at another level compared to UK coverage. There is a lot more space compared to men’s football and that should lead to a decent passing game (it seems to) but a lot of the shots on goal have been awful. Followed by massive praise for a world class strike... or save: IMO that isn’t doing anyone any favours.