A rare very good performance and a very good result to match up. One last job to do.

Yeah, would always expect us to beat an understrength Montenegro side but this is England. Nice couple of gifts too hopefully more teams give us this

Keeper played very well as well. Probably should've been a cricket score.

Just looking at some of the posts from March (because that was when I last came in this thread) and it's borderline hilarious. I forgot it was so long and I was about to rant then I looked at the date.

Let's just say most of the posts were calling Neymar rubbish

I've not really seen him play against anyone of much note yet to be honest. I've seen him v England twice and he was embarrassingly poor. Otherwise he's just played a bunch of mediocre sides in Spain and Europe in front of the best midfield in World football.

Probably one of those people who criticised him so much, never actually said he was rubbish I just don't like his overly showboating style and his very individualistic game. I mean he's doing well at Barca, but really, is that such a shock considering the players around him and the cricket scores they notch up each week against the La Liga sides


Agreed

How about vs. Italy and Spain in the Confederations Cup?

I don't get people who don't rate Neymar. He led Santos to a Libertadores' cup after decades (and no, that is not easy, don't claim it to be). He was Brazil's best player in a Confederations cup where they defeated Spain, Italy and Uruguay. He is now putting in great performances in Barcelona, and friendlies with Brazil.

What will the excuse be if he plays a great world cup? "Oh it was on home turf if it had been somewhere else he would have sucked"

Don't watch the Confederations Cup. Only watch competitive Internationals unless it's England, and no it's not a proper competition. He happened to be really awful in the friendlies with England and was awful against Celtic when I saw him the other night. He's a massively overrated player from what I've seen of him.

Not a proper competition...

Well, I guess the key part of your post is "from what I've seen of him".

Confederations Cup has become the world's 3rd most illustrious national tournament. It's why the best countries (in it) send their strongest squads.

And Neymar owned it.

I remember before it started folk were saying everything you guys did in March, that he was a sand-dancer, full of party tricks and totally over-rated.

By the end the most common rhetorical question I saw on Twitter was 'so who was it again who thinks Neymar's over rated?'.

No doubt it helps playing for Barca, but he's also done it at national level (before hooking up with the Catalans), winning the Confed Cup - which is more than Messi has ever achieved for his country.

Neymar is the real deal. He just needs to get rid of the simulation side of his game and he'll become the ultimate 'trequartista'. He's every inch capable of being as good as Iniesta has in his illustrious career. Maybe even better.

He's a victim of his own success in some ways, people were rating him before they'd ever seen him play properly because they watched some flashy YouTube compilations with over engineered tricks & flicks.

He will get kids excited no doubt, he's the flashy, big-named, play the game like it's FIFA kind of guy but I'm still refraining from calling him one of the best for a few years yet.

My biggest problem with him are the selfish tendencies in his play. Obviously he's a very talented player. But will that be realized fully? It's still too early to tell. Personally I wouldn't be shocked to see him burn out ala Ronaldo/Ronaldinho/Robinho

I think he (and anybody else) would be delighted to see his career end up like Ronaldo's or Ronaldinho's.

And his selfishness has been in check at Barca, where he's been more of an assistman than a striker.

Which lead to him being second most effective assists provider in La Liga?

I'm not really sure what you're referring to there.

As Linkman said, he's kept things in check at Barca. I don't think anyone can go there and try to be the main man as their would be issues. I'm not even claiming I've seen too much of him at Barca as I can't stand watching their games, but when I've seen him with Brazil, in that setting, he certainly feels like he's the centre of attention and acts like a total pr!ck at times. I think that's what bothered me the most about him whenever I've seen him with Brazil.

@ Linkman, obviously having a career like Dinho or Ronaldo would obviously be great but to think of the wasted talent because both of them threw it away because they didn't want to work hard at it anymore

On Dinho, yeah, I fully agree... On Ronaldo, I am a bit more lenient, I think he was a hard worker... he had an injury-prone carrer after all. He had issues with his thyroid gland, which made him very difficult for him to maintain weight, and with both knees giving, he just had to hang his boots earlier than supposed.

Not in my view, it's very second rate. Same goes for the Club World Cup.

Yeah, well, thanks for saving me typing all of the above. Totally agreed, and I suppose it is easy for people to overlook these facts when talking about Ronaldo. I mean, there have been plenty other Brazilians that have wasted their talents, think Andriano and Robinho, Ronaldinho too, to an extent.

But take the painful injuries out of Ronaldo's career, and he could well be the undisputed best ever. At least he played like a champion most of the time he took to the pitch, which is something more than that can be said of many chaps.

Yes, didn't expect you to like that one either. Your call man.

It doesn't matter if Conf. Cup is a second rate competition. Neymar owned some of the best players in the world in that tournament and that's enough to give him his due praise. and don't tell me the mighty, unbeatable Spain didn't take that competition seriously. they tried their best and still got owned by Neymar and co.

Each to their own.

Nice of he FA to give the Poles 10,000 extra tickets so "they don't buy tickets in the home end". Forget England fans wanting to watch England, eh?

It's just supply & demand we have a ridiculous amount of Polish in this country. For the record that's not being racist, that's stating a fact.

I still don't think it's fair. We routinely sell a massive amount of tickets in the home end, just think it takes the piss we cater for everyone else before our own. But then I guess that goes in line with how this country always is.

This is an away game, we're getting booed every-time we touch the ball. The FA ladies & gentleman.

And anybody that dare criticise the decision will no doubt be called a racist/xenophobe.

100%, you're not allowed to be patriotic in England at all, it's against the law.

This is as good as an away game you're ever going to get. On the flip side could you imagine if England made anywhere near this noise, the place would be crazily hostile and such a home advantage.

Townsend and Baines tonight... wow. Just wow.

Townsend is a bright spark, it's like having a Theo Walcott with actual talent it's great.

Now let's keep his feet on the ground.

Rarely easy for us is it. Really good last 2 performances where the scorelines certainly flattered the opposition. Nice to see a few young players coming through now then.

Great performance, Townsend did really well, be interesting to see how he gets on this year.

Yep , nice to see Gerrard score too

Baines cross to Rooney for the goal was really nice too.

Would like to take Lennon to the WC rather then Theo imo.

I worry that there will be silly hype now and he'll go flat before the World Cup. Typical England style.

Yeah, have the same worry. Look what happened to Januzaj the other week, and he's not even English!

Well considering he had hype going into both matches i think he will be our ray of hope for the WC tbh. Also it will give Rooney less of the lime light which is'nt a bad thing either.

France aren't even seeded for the playoffs.

Portugal - France can be a great playoffs matchup

Do you guys always play your home games at Wembley? Is there some other place they could play that wouldn't have had as much "away" feel? Here in the US it got to the point that your description fit exactly the atmosphere when we'd play Mexico in any big city because there is such a large Hispanic population in most cities (especially if it was in L.A.). Now a lot of the home games against Mexico end up getting scheduled in random small cities like Columbus, Ohio or Salt Lake City, Utah.

Yes Wembley has been the home of english football. We used to play in Old trafford when wembley was being built though.

Its pretty easy to quite the away fans down once you score

Nice

Well Wembley is the home of England and should be it's an excellent stadium, I go there yearly for the NFL games, the best stadium I've been to for sure. Problem is England fans don't make much noise at all (at home), there's various reasons for this but it's quite a dull atmosphere.

Even though I thought yesterday was a shambles it's the first time I've seen Wembley loud in a football match - certainly England! You think if our lot made any where near like the noise the Poles did how intimidating you could make that venue?

As a country we have a lot of Polish and the FA gave them an extra allocation, probably to be politically correct. I'm sure had we not won last night there would have been an outrage everywhere about it. The fact we did just means it will probably get pretty much ignored.

I was thinking, how many national teams actually have their own stadium? England have Wembley, I struggle to think of other nations that don't use a club stadium. As for atmosphere, it's the same everywhere. There's a few times where the atmosphere will be very good as it was vs Scotland. But the bigger the stadium, the more diluted the atmosphere will be. If you have 10,000 hardcore fans going to every game, when they're spread out over 80,000 it's not going to be as loud. Villa Park is the same. Home game atmosphere are never as good as away games. You have the hardcore fans spread around, yet in the away end you have a hardcore 3-5k making tonnes of noise.

As an aside, England fans yet again with incredible support. The fans that go may not be the noisiest, but we averaged the highest average attendance of all Europan qualifying and only France were within 15,000 of us.

I was at the England - Scotland game this summer and the Scots drowned us out by a long shot they were loud as hell and had amazing support that match needs to be played more often.

I was also at it, they were loud pre kick off and for a few mins after each goal but our support for that game was ridiculous. It's rare you get a home support that loud, I could barely here them all game. As Ash said, we need to get it loud more as it would make for the biggest home advantage in football.

Yeah the support was pretty dire from us , gotta give it to the scots they won when it came to the support.

Oh and did you watch that scot win that car....he scored in the same side of the goal like 5 times or something stupid lol he won a nice car too

I had Theo to score first could've won 60 but that was ruined he did score first for england though

I thought the Scots were quiet and I was sitting right near the divide between fans, thought it was one of the loudest home supports I've heard as well, each to their own.

I was pretty much in the what theyd call in italy the curva sud and they were right on top of us basically all around us so we were in the thick of it and they were drowning out us easily. They only started to go quite once we started scoring imo.

WC play-off's:

Portugal v Sweden

Greece v Romania

Ukraine v France

Iceland v Croatia

Portugal/Sweden & the Ukraine game should be decent.

+∞ I'm torn between Portugal and Sweden, but I know who I will be supporting in the Ukraine game. And it ain't the French, this much is sure. Let's see what Ibra can do against CRON.