Football

I think playing with less stars makes less egos and more teamwork for England.

How have France been going lately? I haven't been following for a while but given their form towards the end of 2010, I'm not sure they'd be a big threat.

As for Portugal, they can't be in that group. They have to meet England in the quarters

The only thing I enjoy about international games is the knowledge that this deeply amusing/highly sexy advert will be shown at least twice.

^Surely a shoe-in for the next James Bond?

Hey, Sepp Blatter isn't racist: http://seppblatterwithblackpeople.wordpress.com/ :FootballThread: Apparently nobody is racist in football at all - except John Terry...

^Does this site look to anyone else like a modern day equivalent of Father Ted's 'Not A Racist' slide show?

Beckham's team won the MLS Cup

^Will Beckham be missed by American fans if he joins PSG/joins Spurs/retires?

He definitely brought viewers to the sport. I don't think casual fans will miss him. Only Galaxy fans.

RIP Gary Speed.

RIP Gary Speed.

I remember him mostly from his Newcastle years. RIP

Was really shocked when i heard the news RIP Gary

^A universally popular guy - there aren't a whole lot of people in the footballing world you could honestly say that about.

Amusing stuff from Serie A - Napoli's Marek Hamsik is ordered to retake a penalty after initially 'scoring' then celebrating in a rather exuberant fashion. I don't know why there are stairs behind the goal either.

After almost 100 matches and two and a half years in charge, I think it says a lot that Bruce was still asking for time from the board and patience from the fans. The current team is almost exclusively his own, and it's also one that is fundamentally unbalanced, woefully short in several positions, devoid of genuine width (especially on the left), pedestrian in midfield and sadly lacking up front.

Now I'm sure Steve didn't intend things to pan out this way. I mean, he may have thought Fergie would give us Danny Welbeck for another year. He probably thought he could get Charles Nzogbia. He didn't plan on Fraizer Campbell being out for so long, and probably didn't expect to lose Gyan and Bent in such quick succession. With even one of those players available to us, things could have been very different at this point. But that's the problem with Bruce - the only Plan B he seems to know is the Michael Oliver lookalike singer.

Of course, Short could have stuck by Steve in the hope of developing a siege mentality until reinforcements were signed in January. However, given the lack of concentration and tactical discipline shown by the players in the latter stages of recent games (hello Wesley), grinding out scrappy results seemed unlikely. Bruce did seem to be something of a lucky manager in that we would often scrape victories in do-or-die games but a neverending cycle of the occasional fortunate win followed by five or six surrenders really didn't appeal to me, nor would it have appeased the fans in the long term. So, while I've no real animosity towards the man and will even admit to feeling ill at ease with some of the vitriol shown towards him by certain sections of our support, I'm afraid his position had become untenable. Short had to act - not doing so would most probably have seen us relegated by February.

Bruce's me against the world the demeanour always rankled with me; he seemed to have plenty of cash to throw around yet all of his signings felt based on hope rather than any semblance of a plan. The exits of Bent/Gyan/Welbeck were legitimate grievances (to varying extents) but he was vastly underachieving long before then anyway.

Which leads me to Martin. You may remember that I howled like a werewolf when he left us but hindsight is a wonderful thing and I don't feel much warmth towards the man these days. The ramifications of his time here are still very keenly felt and I think his exit was poor form on his part. Randy, I'm sorry. So long as you're sorry about Houllier, that is.

Anyway, Michael, I hope the board have the chequebook ready, O'Neill doesn't do anything cheap as Habib Beye's contract can attest!

EURO 2012:

Group A:

Poland

Greece

Russia

Czech Republic

Group B:

The Netherlands

Denmark

Germany

Portugal

Group C:

Spain

Italy

Republic of Ireland

Croatia

Group D:

Ukraine

Sweden

France

England

Pretty good draw for England, hopefully we can go through as group winners.

Having selected Krakow in Poland as their training base, England will face journeys of up to 930 miles to Donetsk and 540 miles to Kiev.

I look forward to when this decision becomes the official scapegoat for England's elimination.