Wasnt that impressed with england, but I rarely am...
the fact someone on here could only list a handful of decent results/memorable moments in the past 20-30 years says it all...
the tactics, technique etc are always left wanting and they ALWAYS get found out..
there we're a few decent individual performances but isreal we're piss poor...
russia will be more of a test...
I made reference to stand out moments, not to a handful of decent rsults mate.
Maybe you are young and didn't see the football we played in 86 and 90 under Bobby Robson, but the fact is, it was very good mate and we were only knocked out of both those world cups by the eventual winners. Once via a handball and Lineker getting pushed into the back of the net when he was about to score and the other on penalties.
The fact is people have this tendency to look back on football without a sort of all powerful hindsight. England could quite easily be sitting back with 3 world cups right now but for the smallest of margins, just as Italy could have had one more from 94 etc. In fact we were FAR better in 1990 than we were in 66, but then no one is likely to agree with that given the hindsight we have. We also came close in Euro 96 and again only went out to the winners on penalties.
England have been horrendous under Graham Taylor, Keegan, Sven and MCclaren....and yes we have only won one world cup.
Does that mean we have to turn in on ourselves and re-write history as though there were never any near misses and as though it was always bad?
That's a bit orwellian and 1984 isn't it?
Gaza was a nats wing from connecting with a cross that would have put Germany out of the 1990 World Cup and put us in the final....but we re-write the history that we have always been bad because we didn't win in the end...crazy.
If you asked the German players in that semi final if hey felt it was destined that they were going to win or if it was a very tough game that could have gone either way...I am pretty sure I know what they would say. I think the same could be said for Argentina in 86.
If we are going to hammer England and pretend we were not good in 86 or 1990 then we might as well pretend that Brazil were not good in 82.......it is just bad logic.
As for the person who ominously said "wait until Wednesday".
Again for god sake what is the problem?
No one has cried from the roof tops that beating an dogged Israeli side makes England world beaters. Can we not be a little bit happy at obtaining a reasonable result with a reasonable performace without a "I hope you lose, so I can slag you off" comment?
Of course it will be different on Wednesday and no one is suggesting any different. We hope that we can get a good result and performace but we do not expect it like it is owed to us.
I have not seen one person act that way, or with any arrogance that such a comment suggests...so we don't deserve those type of comments.