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England always play better in february than June, nothing to do with tactics so much. The players looked f*cked, sloppy and as if they had never played together before. Then 2nd half, they bring Ox on (.....who can not be zapped of energy after a long season because he's 19 and Venger doesn't play his English players enough, and then Ox manages to knit a couple of passages together, Rooney suddenly becomes involved more and we find ourselves 2- 1 up......

I think last night's results papered over some HUGE cracks in the England team.

I know we were playing Brazil but that first half was mind-numbing... and the second half wasn't much better. We were sooooo negative! We had men formed up behind the ball and then tried to break quickly but we just don't have good enough players to play passing football that quickly. We're not comfortable enough on the ball. Some players also need to be braver. Brave on the football pitch isn't just going in for 50/50 challenges... it is asking for the ball in a tight area... it is running at a defender... it is overlapping the winger. Be brave!

I'm not a Hodgson fan (never was, Liverpool job was too big for him... so is England) as he isn't adventurous enough for the big teams. You can draw lots of games with West Brom because they don't expect success. He struggled at Liverpool because fans wanted to win most games but Roy just doesn't set his sides up to play attacking football.

I think we might even fail to get to the World Cup.

We're definitely not the finished article yet; if we had been, we should have prevented both Brazilian goals. Certainly need to tighten up defensively.

Not sure about Hodgson. He could turn out to be an Alf Ramsey figure and produce a winning England team, or he could be a big failure.

In which case, I wonder who will be the next England manager: Alan Knill, Martin Ling, Paul Buckle, Carl Fletcher..??

I think the fact that Brazil had 25 shots to Englands 2 first half tells it's own story. A story of a country of 50 odd million people who cannot produce 11 brilliant footballers and even if they could they would be stifled by a manager as negative as Martin Ling. I expected England to keep it tight but to show nothing at all going forward was extremely sad. If England are to regain any sense of national pride again then they need to be able to compete pound for pound against these teams and not just be battered into submission and hoping for the odd chance which by chance 2 of them came v Brazil and 2 great finishes help paper over some IMMENSE cracks like Steve says. It's ok mullering Moldova and doing ok in qualifying but when they get to the big one they are so far away it's heartily amusing. Just look at the England team player by player, it is desperately poor and once again hopes are pinned on Wilshere or Chamberlain to somehow become special whilst Germany have a full sqaud on whose hopes are pinned and most of them ARE special. England are a trillion miles away and have been for 20 years but nobody at the FA is listening. Still, so long as the suits can enjoy their jaunts all over the world on freebies then why bother ?

Andy, you're Austrian and therefore obviously know feck all about International football, pipe down and get used to being ranked below teams like Oman, Tibet and Nicaragua...........................

Southampton Gull wrote:Andy, you're Austrian and therefore obviously know feck all about International football, pipe down and get used to being ranked below teams like Oman, Tibet and Nicaragua...........................

Southampton Gull wrote:Andy, you're Austrian and therefore obviously know feck all about International football, pipe down and get used to being ranked below teams like Oman, Tibet and Nicaragua...........................

Oh yes. The rankings. Which have England at 7 in the world when they haven't won anything for 47 years and only been in one semi final in 23 years and who always get p*ss easy qualifying groups and who were battered by Brazil who are only ranked 19th? Greece, Croatia and Ecuador are ranked higher than Brazil. I'd like to see them play the Samba boys and see who wins those matches! Those rankings are so accurate aren't they? :no:

:na:

Meanwhile our inferior national team has to play Germany every bleedin' qualifying , Turkey, Sweden, Ireland and other testing nations in friendlies which is why we are where we are. We could technically arrange friendlies against Malta, Turks & Caicos Islands and San Marino every month and we'd soon be in the top 10.

AustrianAndyGull wrote:Meanwhile our inferior national team has to play Germany every bleedin' qualifying , Turkey, Sweden, Ireland and other testing nations in friendlies which is why we are where we are. We could technically arrange friendlies against Malta, Turks & Caicos Islands and San Marino every month and we'd soon be in the top 10.

You really reckon you could beat San Marino?

Yeah...................................... at skiing.

oh, and making smoked cheese.

Man City sign a couple of players for zillions and they haven't even got a manager yet. More money than sense those lot.

AustrianAndyGull wrote:Man City sign a couple of players for zillions and they haven't even got a manager yet. More money than sense those lot.

Do you mean 'that lot' or 'those lots', Andy?

Rules of grammar: :rules:

I'm reminded of Sacha Baron Cohen, when, as Ali G, he asked linguistics professor Noam Chomsky: ‘How many words does you know, and what is some of them?’ :~D

Yes but if I wanted to say 'those people' then I would say just that and not 'that people' or 'those peoples' so I think i'm right.

AustrianAndyGull wrote:Yes but if I wanted to say 'those people' then I would say just that and not 'that people' or 'those peoples' so I think i'm right.

Of course you do. But that's not an accurate analogy.

If you look at the frequent expression, for example, 'those sort of persons', it would be more grammatically correct to say either 'that sort of person' or 'those sorts of persons'. Similarly, one should more correctly say 'that lot' or 'those lots'.

The important thing is to recognise what is singular and what is plural, and to match like with like, i.e. singular with singular, plural with plural.

The problem with your analogy is that the same word 'people' can be used to refer to either (a) one individual group (the Ugandan people, singular) or (more usually) (b) to a number of individuals (the people in Uganda, plural), whereas 'lot' has its own plural word, 'lots'. 'The peoples of Uganda and Kenya' is the plural of the usage (a) and further complicates matters. Hence your confusion as to the correct use of grammar. And hence your grammatical error.

This is one of a number of common errors known as colloquialisms or vulgarisms! It is not in itself of huge importance, except that, insofar as the more language moves away from standard and precise usage, the more likely it is to encourage misunderstandings and lack of communication.

Which is not to say that language should not evolve, and obviously in certain contexts you can say what you want, how you want, if you're certain of being understood. But, in normal everyday usage, it's usually best to choose the safe and well-trodden path to be sure of being properly understood, when addressing a wide audience or readership.