Better off out of it

Hodgson took a half fit Wiltshire to the Euros and tried to get him match fit by introducing him during games and persisted with this even though he was obviously rusty, half fit and played poorly. He took Barkley whose form had dipped even though he had decided not to play him. It was a mistake not to take the in-form Drinkwater.

Our players didn't play and so they are out of the blame. Let them rest a bit and join the team for pre-season.

You English people should not think deeply about your ouster because it is expected that you would not progress beyond tehe 2nd round. Or were you fans more???

Time to get behind Barkley and Stones.

Ross may have provided something different, off the wall. But he also would have been more of the same, a central ball player. Picking a squad of 22 players and leaving yourself that short of width and players that can beat people is very poor management.

Barkley must have only just made the squad, he didnt involve him. With Rooney playing mid why he took him at the expense of width I don't know. He ended up shovelling strikers, none goal scoring attacking midfielders (Lallana), or a confidence shot Sterling into a 4-3-3.

They were out of ideas after an hour against Iceland.

Clearly I can't speak for everyone but it certainly seemed like that when I was growing up and I would add our home-based red cousins to that mould too.

I can't associate with England football; for me (and I confess to stereotyping here so no offence meant) it represents overly agressive, tattooed men, predominantly from the south east of England chanting unimaginative "songs"(?) whose focus more often than not is abusing the opposition... insert supporters of most London teams. Not for me, welcome back unscathed Ross and John, both physically and reputationally.

I would prefer Everton players were not risked in these matches. Who do these international teams really represent anyway. Many players who represent national side only have tenuous links to them. Messi for example, has lived in Spain since he was a child and only visits Argentina to play football. We all know about that shit Diego Costa's feelings for his native Brazil.

Kane taking corners (not particularly well) when he is among the tallest strikers(?) on the park. Just crossing a ball in general play, so called wing/backs couldn't pick a player out if they were on their own in the box. Talk about overrated.

Goal side positioning, (see Iceland's goals), positioning at corners and free kicks? Junior coaches, even part-time dentists could do better. Overpaid, overrated and they'll all be turning out in just over month to kid the public they are worth the funny money they earn. Pathetic!

Although I share Andy Crook's fears. Our boys journey with the games most prominent material girls was mercifully cut short, but how long before the malign influence he speaks about starts rubbing off ?

As long as England play with two lumps at the back they will continue to be predictable. As long as they leave out players like Drinkwater in favour of more illustrious names, they will leave the party early.

Taking nothing away from Iceland they were terrific, but a decent manager with a decent set up could have sent twenty different teams over there and every one of them would have beaten Iceland.

There is something rotten about the England set up, The London press pick the team even though the manager is usually the highest paid in the world. top players (often world class) are happy to reap the rewards of being selected but completely unable to do the basics in a team which always seems to be divided by North/south East/West factions.

England havent had a team since Alf Ramsey was prepared to tell the press to go fuck themselves when they hounded him leaving out the superstars. Glen Hoddle came close, he left out Gazza in favour of the team, but his foolish comments gave the hacks their chance to oust him.

England need a manager not a diplomatic lap dog. I want somebody who will stare down the pundits and the press and say "fuck you". . I would honestly love to see somebody like Nigel Pearson get the job . . . Then I'd watch

Why don't we look at out Rugby team ? after years of nice failure, they went and got themselves a winner. He doesnt always say the right things, but fuck me does he win

Looking ahead at the tournament, it's fascinating to see the usual machine of Germany and the flair of the home nation. Will either of them they get past the three lumps of Italy?The best defensive unit in world football.

It will be very interesting to watch.

I think they will both come back mentally a little down. Your team losing and you don't even get a game. That can hurt I'm sure.

I sat and watched every game in the hope to see game time, especially from Barkley. Sure he might have not turned it around.. but what if he had? The 5 minutes Rashford got enhanced his reputation.

It was telling to me that when the panels discuss options I rarely (if ever) heard them mention bringing on Barkley. I couldn't understand it was like he had become anonymous when he WAS the go to guy for any game changing actions needed.

No.. I would have preferred them to play.. why? Because I believe in them and believe they are exactly what England needed.

I felt sorry for our lads not kicking a single ball, but at least they'll now escape the post-mortem with their reputations still in-tact.

That said, I think they were both a touch fortunate to make the squad.

Hodgson made so many errors there's not enough space to mention them all, but England losing hardly hurts like when the Blues lose so roll on August and the new Premier League season

Yes Steve, we certainly got interested when at long last, and only due to injuries and suspension, Everton's finest eventually got a game! That was the era when we were dominating domestic football yet the England manager, Robson,only went to watch Everton when they were playing near his home in Ipswich in the November, a fact that was ridiculed in the National press at the time. Like the dickhead who has just been ousted he preferred to risk his favourites despite their injury fears, (for Wishire read Robson) and brought Reid, Steven etc. into the team versus Paraguay when he had no other choice.

As a 17 year old I saw England win the 1966 World Cup final on the TV and can remember how excited and proud I felt about it all. This is the team that played in the final against West Germany.

Gordon Banks
George Cohen
Jack Charlton
Bobby Moore
Ray Wilson
Nobby Styles
Alan Ball
Bobby Charlton
Martin Peters
Geoff Hurst
Roger Hunt

I can tell you that team would have run rings round the England team that got knocked out by Iceland. None of the players who lost yesterday, with the possible exception of Rooney, would have got a game in 1966.

They were men each and every one of them who gave everything for the England shirt and they had a manager who they respected and who out thought the opposition.

It was a perfectly balanced team with players coming from all over England. Yes 3 from West Ham and 1 from Fulham but they all deserved their place. Those men made me proud to be English - and the whole country was behind them.

Today in contrast English football is tearing itself apart and the rest of the world is gloating. Even though I left England 43 years ago that still does my head in.

What the England team needs is a manager that will pick a team to win, not one that the media or popular opinion promotes - and a manager that will make the players feel proud to pull on that England shirt.

Sam Allardyce fits that mould - he would have had Danny Drinkwater and Mark Noble in his team no question about it. Why? - because they are made of the same stuff as Nobby Styles.

Allardyce, Pardew, and Pulis (I know he's Welsh) get some hammer - they are not renowned for putting out entertaining teams but I often wonder what they might have achieved if they had had access to a higher calibre of player. I am pretty sure anyone of them would have picked a totally different squad than Hodgson from the current crop of English players playing in premiership teams.

Forster
Simpson
Shawcross
Stones
Baines
Noble
Drinkwater
Shelvey
Barkley
Carrol
Vardy

That team would have torn Iceland apart but the papers and FA wouldn't like it - too old and not glamorous enough. Play to your strengths (if you want to win).

I think Martinez had more personality than Roy but who was worse?

Have a rest from what?)

I am afraid that we do not produce play makers in the modern game who are British.Shelvey I admit would be a far better bet than Wilshire who was a liability.Unfortunately the best schemers and ball players are foreign and our players tend to give them the ball and let them make the incisive passes.In that England set up we had no one who could provide the correct passes to create chances.We did not miss chances against Iceland because we did not create them in open play.If there had not been a penalty we would never have scored.We seem not to be able to make Mahrez, Payet, Modrich, Ozil, Kroos, Iniesta, Silva, Fabregas type players in this modern game.Since Scholes and Gerrard we have not found a player to take their place.Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling played well for Liverpool with Gerrard supplying the ammunition.Scholes made every front man loads of goal chances at Man Utd and scored a few screamers himself.We seem to have a conveyor belt of 'Drones' who work and run up and down but who cannot pass or shoot.The manager took his selection of players mainly from the club sides who had a decent season.Wilshire was the only one who had hardly played and was a big surprise selection IMO.I would have preferred Shelvey or Drinkwater as both have showed that they can pass the ball.Until our coaches can produce real ball players who can pick a pass and beat their man in one to one situations we will continue to struggle.Our rich clubs will continue to buy foreign stars to the detriment of our academy kids unless a top class youngster forces his way through from the ranks.Where are our NEW Scholes....Everton fans are crying out for a hero who can excite the fans and bring success.

"..t'was ever thus that they're better off.." Not Bard methinks.

My team (4-4-2):

Forster
Clyne
Dann
Stones
Creswell
Tom Davis (CM)
Barkley (RM)
Drinkwater (DM)
Rashford (LM)
Carroll
Vardy

Drinkwater may not be the best, most highly rated midfielder, but he increases Vardy's effectiveness because they play together every week. Iceland proved that a teams value can be greater than the sum of it's parts. England started with a CF on the RW and a twat on the LW. No wide attacking players in the squad??????

It's been 50 years since England won the World Cup and when they did the powers that be in the game, including the media (although I agree the media should NOT be a power in the game but unfortunately it is) believed that England had then regained its pre-eminence in the game that we never really believed we had or should have lost. It's that typical English arrogance again. Having regained that pre-eminence it was felt that it would never be surrendered again and that trophies into the future would surely be the norm. Four years later, in Mexico, a team that was as good as anybody in the tournament was ousted because of Banks' absence, his replacement by a much inferior goalkeeper who made many mistakes on the day, poor and needless substitutions when winning easily and a hefty slice of bad luck.

As an England fan in those days, as well as everybody else I knew, I recognised that and believed wholeheartedly that England still had one of the best teams in the world and that it had been somewhat unlucky not to at least get to the final. Brazil would have had a much more difficult game than they had against Italy if England had done so. But the media were not so forgiving. Ramsey's substitutions became the catalyst for an incredible amount of criticism from the media, a level of criticism that the 'fans' did not necessarily share. As far as the media were concerned, Ramsey's card was marked because he had not ensured the continuance of England's 'superiority'.

From that moment on the media tried, with some success it has to be said, to take control of the England team. Every defeat was met with derision. Managers, whether they deserved it or not, were castigated for every perceived failure of result or style. The media believed that hype could encourage the team and sell newspapers and proclaimed before tournaments how we were going to win them, sometimes in revenge for Dunkirk or whatever, only for the derision to return when they failed. This meant, because people, players and managers really do believe that the media reveals the minds of the masses, the team were always under an incredible amount of pressure. To wear an England shirt was like living in a pressure cooker when even victories were criticised if they did not meet the stylistic standards demanded.

You just can't play your game in an England shirt as you do for your club consistently under those circumstances. Fear rather than pride becomes the overriding emotion. You know that everybody 'back home' is expecting something to be happy with and woe betide you if you don't provide it.

England CAN produce the players. We did in 1970...we did to a certain extent in 1986. We certainly did in 1990 when during the tournament and despite a poor start we became the best team in my view. In 1996 we were incredibly unlucky. In 2002 we should have done much better. But many times between there have been lapses but all teams have lapses. Where are Brazil now? Holland?

We CAN produce the players. What we cannot produce is a winning mentality within those players once they pull on an England Shirt. What we also lack most of the time are managers with guile and with an ability to set us up with an 'England' style and an ability to pick the players to fit into that style rather than trying to make a style out of the players he and the media think he should choose. What we also lack most of the time is a management prepared to look beyond the usual clubs for players and possessing the courage to tell the media to fuck off when they try to pick the team rather than feeling he has to appease them.

But...We can produce the players. We just have to learn how best to use them and treat them.

Ok, I get it - you were joking.

I agree with all 7 of your posts!

On a serious note, you highlight further evidence. It's not paranoia and it's not conspiracy theory thinking; it's just a consistent theme of the Everton-England relationship throughout the course of the past several decades.

The England football team belongs to the London press and its predominantly south-east fan base (with pockets of West Midlands and Yorkshire elements thrown in). They're welcome to it and I've personally been looking forward to MK Dons away next month.

They can go on about managers all they like but until the country addresses the dire situation at grass roots we won't produce players who can compete on the same level of their German, Spanish, Italian and Belgium (yes Belgium....who'd have said that a decade ago?) counterparts.

Premier League clubs would pull through, develop and play more English players if the system was producing them on a scale of the country's mentioned above. It isn't so they go elsewhere to find them.

The FA invests at the top; a multi-million pound complex that the tiny fraction of those who make it through benefit from. Build the roof first then lay the foundations - an arse about face business model. Meanwhile, most of us are trying to coach kids to play technical football on mud whilst their continental counterparts train on clay and 5G.

I'd tweak a few things with your lineup, but it frankly is exactly what England needed, and exactly what no English manager seemingly has the guts to do:

Pick a side that isn't full of prima donnas but rather a side that has heart, talent, and is balanced.

England are a mess and until they appoint a manager who isn't in awe of the "big" clubs and doesn't play fantasy football manager they are doomed.

Drink a glass of water upside down and take a teaspoon of sugar and those hiccups will stop.

I bid you all a good evening.

Take out Tom Davies and put in Jason Puncheon.

On the debate re the current best eleven. The most important thing in international football, according to some coaches, is to play with ball playing centre halves, not proper defenders like the Italy back three.

With that in mind I would suggest England in future use John Stones and Eric Dier as a sweeper. They would get twatted every game but it would be thrilling to watch them carry the ball out of the back four.

My son was told it was used by England's rugby players, by England's women's team, by England's age group teams and above all by Burton Albion. The one group who aren't keen on using it were apparently England's men's team. It was too remote!

Interesting perspective on our football stars, I think.

Time and again, we have seen England bottle it when the pressure is on. I used to think 15 years ago that it was a lack of talent but it is not the case anymore.

I look at Italy – least talented squad they have sent for a long time – and the passion and team spirit they displayed so far has been superb. Ditto Iceland and Wales.

Those saying the Premier League ponces lack the heart may have a point.

I really think they would get further in a tournament than all those Premier League dickheads, who really only want to spend more time polishing their Bentleys (or watch someone else polish it for them!).