Spudulike

I'm still not sure that the tournament is the right time to try to improve Sterling's confidence.

Scottish media right behind us... Huge game as, as a stand-alone event, anything can happen. Come on England!

A good set of predictions; I'd back Hungary to beat Belgium but it depends which Belgium turns up. Wales/N.I. will be hard fought. It should be a great game.

Just a few mins. Hold on lads.

Gooooaaaaalllllll !!!!!!!!!!!!

Sh** - what a chance.

There are goals here for Ireland. Just a bit of luck needed.

Blimey. Application withdrawn. In Wales, they sometimes give fans a phonetic version of the anthem as Welsh is not commonly spoken. Welsh is hard but the Gaelic (?) you posted looks solid. It's an open game. Ireland will have chances. Good luck to them.

If i break the code, do I win a job at GCHQ? The Italian anthem lasts about 15 minutes.

N.I. Wales would be a great home nations match. Thanks for the info. Congrats to Hungary too.

It's a cliche but there's no burden of pressure or expectation on Iceland. Pressure seems to weigh us down. #CodwarsII (for the older of us)

Interesting. "Do-able". Thanks for the info Coco.

Does anyone know who Wales will play pls?

I agree - see my second post.

It's still not impossible that we could **** it up! :-)

Iceland!!! A free pass for us, surely? Roy gets the rub of the green. Well, more like a caress.

I don't want to beat Roy the person; he seems a decent bloke to be honest. I am concerned about Roy the manager, mainly because of the changes made before the Slovakia game. There's a lot to be said for having a settled team, with players understanding the system and each other. Changing players on the scale of Monday can't help with team cohesion(?)

A condensed version of an article in today's 'i' newspaper: The FA are very unhappy with Roy for placing us on the wrong side of the knockout draw by making wholesale changes to the team before it faced Slovakia. There is also speculation that Roy has decided on more changes for the next game, despite not knowing who we are playing and despite us having to win. The accusation is that Roy still doesn't know his preferred starting XI. He shouldn't be faffing about with player selection now. That's what pre-tournament friendlies are for(?). Meanwhile, Alan Shearer says that Roy is playing Sturridge, Vardy and Kane in positions that they are not comfortable with. This makes sense as my impression has been that, in our games so far, we are not posing a threat to the opposition. Possession? Yes. Goals? No. In summary, we are on the verge of ****ing up another campaign. Bear in mind we completey ****ed up the World Cup and this will be a "blood on the floor" situation for Roy and the FA as a whole, particularly if Wales progress further than us when they have a much, much smaller pool of players to select from, much less funding, etc. This will be worse for England because it can be argued that Roy took victory against Slovakia for granted and gifted the Welsh passage into the easier side of the draw.

N.I. and Wales have done v well to get though the groups. They are showing England how it's done in terms of commitment and either team might go further in the contest than us, at the moment. Well done to both nations.

F***ing hell. Shameful.

I've just seen extended highlights of Wales v Russia. Quite a spectacle and Ramsay was very impressive, as was the whole team in terms of work rate. Russia were all over the shop but Wales were impressive; their confidence must be soaring.

We've drawn two and won one, when in all three games we dominated possession. In ko stages, draws = extra time and penalties. I will try and be more optimistic! :-)

That's true. That makes sense - hopefully we'll play a team in those conditions.

Fair point too but, having shown that we struggle to break down defence in depth, why would a team play open football against us?

I agree BUT, aside from Iceland, you couldn't say that Austria or Portugal are any less capable than Slovakia. We're also sort of saying that doing less well is a good thing as it's given us an easy draw but from now on we don't score and we are out. Sorry for my pessimism.