Dan

They're a busted flush - that much is obvious.

his birthday is actually 1st July. Sensational.

Biggest concern about Dyche for me is our most dangerous players are our wingers and I don't think he'd be the one best suited to utilise this.

This is also true however - you'd not put it past us to make this a 2 year £30k a week job

I dislike our transfer policy (if one exists) as much as anyone but this is more prudent than what we did with Ward all those years ago. To me this is just this version of Jakupovic which was a basically harmless move. Pearson liked a signing like this. By all means absolutely don't sign any 38 year old outfielders.

The South Americans are having a fantastic group stage, still unbeaten despite playing Chelsea, PSG, Benfica, Dortmund. It probably falls on Boca v Bayern but at this rate who knows. I called this completely wrong - I thought the Europeans would expose a big gulf here despite the circumstances not really suiting them but it just hasn't happened.

I've not read the rest of this thread so I'm thinking somebody has probably already said this, but I am starting to think Puel is becoming overrated if anything now. His floor was not as low as the likes of Rodgers or Van Nistelrooy. Fair enough. But he wasn't good. Very limited, dour football which consistently failed to produce wins at home to 'lesser' sides - something I was warned of pre-appointment by somebody who followed French football. The recruitment while he was here was great, but even then there are a couple of issues for me. The first is we still managed to piss £25mil on Ghezzal & Ward in the summer of 2018. The other is that how much truly was that down to him? Ricardo I will give him credit for. I've no idea how much input he had on the likes of Maddison, Soyuncu, Evans. Given the way Rodgers tanked the club I'll always have a bit more respect for Puel given he on numerous occasions I think took a more difficult decision for the benefit of the club. He would at least try and do right for the club - something that should be an absolute least you expect but clearly this isn't really the case when you've seen some of his predecessors. I also think it's pretty telling that he's had one club since he was here - St Etienne where he was sacked before he took them down. Not a disaster of a manager but the revisionism around his time is getting a bit of 'a lie told a hundred times is still a lie'. Don't miss that era. It was far better than this, granted.

He can do no wrong in the eyes of plenty. He's been nothing short of a total disaster. If you managed to restore us from what we are now, to what we were when he inherited us, you'd arguably have done a better job than someone like Benham or Bloom. He's been about as inept as he could possibly have been. The longer he's here the worse it gets - I'm almost intrigued to see quite how far it actually falls.

Boca Benfica ending a draw is quite funny in terms of that group - it's just going to mean it's about whoever batters Auckland the hardest and doesn't have Bayern do the same to them.

USA in general is a bad host. It's just too big. I'm sure the 2026 World Cup covers a bigger distance than Euro 2020 that was played all over Europe (and bloody Baku).

Boca Benfica the game of the tournament so far. No surprise - the Argentines are always great value in tournaments. I do see how much it clearly means to teams like those and find it hard to completely shit on it.

That message is something he's sent not received

On the whole I do like him but as ever, the right offer and I would sell.

Should've known this Austria friendly would be a load of nothing. So so far there's only one game where over about 300 people can attend and it's £20 a ticket.

I've always sort of liked the idea of being able to play other confederations in competitive games but I don't really see how you can really achieve it in a way that suits everyone.

Yep - literally all of this. He's ticks virtually every box for what I think they would go for. I'd have been quite open to Carrick a couple of years ago but too many red flags for me - hint of the Martin without being as irritating or as extreme.

Carrick just feels inevitable to me.

Thought this myself. The Maresca Man City stuff conveniently came after they'd just won the treble. I'd imagine in the summer it'll be "Sean Dyche promised me he'd have us playing like PSG"

Definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy about this. Entire rhetoric around these two games was that we shouldn't be playing them. This sort of thing rubs off I'd imagine. Two genuinely pitiful results followed - no huge surprise really.

Embarrassing from England. We seem to lose far more home games than we used to. Senegal are a good and fun team to watch. Thought they fully deserved the win.

Agree 100%. I strangely think the level of performance in 2022 was probably the highest Southgate delivered despite it being the earliest we went out, and 2024 was the opposite - the furthest we went but the worst performance. He had insane fortune with draws.

Yeah we are absolutely trash haha

It's very England. It's often an allowance made to players who haven't really delivered when it's been most needed either. Kane's been a flat-track bully for England.

England have been rubbish since Qatar to be honest. Hard to not ignore the red flags under Tuchel so far. Three and a half poor performances.

Feels a bit of a trap to me. You're paying peak fee and wages. It's probably the right time for Oxford to sell put it that way.