Originally Posted by Derek S (Post 35047806)

Too soon? :D

TRIBUTES are being paid to Scotland today after the entire country laughed itself to death. The alarm was first raised at around 4pm as thousands of phone calls and text messages went unanswered.

Small groups of volunteers from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Carlisle ventured north only to find houses full of dead people gathered around still blaring television sets.
As RAF helicopters flew over deserted city streets, it was clear that the whole country had suffered a catastrophic abdominal rupture.
Wayne Hayes, a special constable from Northumberland, said: "We went into one house in Dunbar and found three men sitting on the sofa with huge smiles on their faces, still holding cans of tennents. They seemed to be at peace."
He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and pants round his knees.
"It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."

Roy Hobbs, a civil engineer from Northampton, said: "I got a call from my friend Ian in Stirling at about 3:40PM
"He was already laughing when I answered the phone, but after about 25 minutes of the most vigorous and uncontrollable hilarity, everything suddenly went very quiet."

Moving tributes are already being placed along the Scotland-England border with many mourners opting to leave a simple bag of chips or a deep fried bunch of flowers.

Originally Posted by Derek S (Post 35047806)

He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and pants round his knees.
"It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."

Originally Posted by RizzyKing (Post 35047832)

Fair play to germany they weren't brilliant but they played well and deserved the win disallowed goal or not they won that match and the right team did win it.

Originally Posted by RizzyKing (Post 35047832)

Right now english national football deserves to be the laughing stock it really does never in my life have i seen a bigger bunch of passionless going through the motions waste of space before. Capello and his stubborness need a p45 and so do many of those players who seriously looked like they had better things to do then be on the pitch. Maybe it is time to incentivise them with their clubs saying "get picked for national squad and play crap and your wage gets chopped when you get home" watch how fast they get some passion. Sorry day for english football and an even sorrier day to be a supporter of it i am totally embarassed right now to say i support england and mug that i am will continue too but right now i don't have to like it.

Fair play to germany they weren't brilliant but they played well and deserved the win disallowed goal or not they won that match and the right team did win it.

Originally Posted by Niles Crane (Post 35047854)

I'm convinced the people who go on about wages haven't got a clue about football.

Do you think the Germany squad play for peanuts? The game is a professional sport overseas too, you know.

Originally Posted by gazfan (Post 35047857)

I admit I haven't a clue about football, but even though I first attended a game back in the 1960's I'll bet the players, then, didn't earn 50x the average wage.

I've got a ticket stub for Stamford Bridge that cost £5.25 - I stood on the grassy bank that was then the shed & watched Peter Osgood play against Grimsby Town - I'd be surprised if, even he, earned that much more than my yearly wage per week, then....

Originally Posted by Sirius (Post 35047625)

But if at the end of the day players go out on that pitch with there own agenda then what can the manager do.

Originally Posted by Russ (Post 35047673)

Manager after manager, your team consistently fails on the big stage. Let's face it, apart from that minor blip back in 66 England have never looked like World champions.

Originally Posted by Niles Crane (Post 35047861)

It doesn't really matter. The Germany players are all stinking rich too, so it's pretty illogical to use the England players salary as reasoning for their demise or lack of "passion".

Originally Posted by Niles Crane (Post 35047854)

I'm convinced the people who go on about wages haven't got a clue about football.

Do you think the Germany squad play for peanuts? The game is a professional sport overseas too, you know.

Originally Posted by Sirius (Post 35047878)

You right i don't have a clue about Football i watch rugby, however on the performance of some of our highly paid ballerinas sorry footballers i would say nether do they.

End of the day the average man takes a while to save up to be able to afford a tournament like this and shows passion when he is there supporting the team, The likes of Rooney and Gerrard don't give a hoot about the cost and even if they did have to pay its pocket money to them, the only player yesterday with any passion was James and he can hold his head up high knowing he saved us from a bigger defeat.

Originally Posted by Horace (Post 35047860)

I'm probably the only person in the whole world, with the exception of Capello that thought we did ok, the main problem was the bad linesman decision, we saw in the Mexico match how bad decisions like that really mess a team up, players try to 'get back' for the mistake and in turn lose concentration and tried too hard to score. It's no co-incidence that Germany scored two goals on the counter-attack, John Terry being at the other end of the pitch during one of them. Our defence behaved completely differently to all other games after that decision, it had been fine up until today and I don't remember any criticism of the defence during qualifiers or indeed the first three games.