Lewis Dunk

Semi finals or not. The likes of Sven, Fabio, Roy couldn’t get us there despite the hype. Just because he hasn’t picked a cherries player wrongly or rightly doesn’t mean we start saying he shouldn’t manage the national team or will ‘get found out soon.’ It was the best England side we’ve had for decades a couple of months ago.

I think the key word there is .... Hype. Exactly the issue that has plagued English football for decades.

I'm not knocking the achievements of the England team last summer but the facts are we lost 3 games and never really looked like opening up any team from open play beyond Panama. If Southgate wants to play fast, exciting attacking football he needs to pick players for that system. Through Eddies relentless coaching philosophy our players have it in their DNA so I think Cook would make far more sense than Dunk.
 
Ironic that a player from Brighton gets a call up when we took Cook from Brighton and he has more PL experience. I think Southgate has got this wrong...but we will see I guess?
 
While I am sure the players would want a call up, from a purely selfish point of view I would rather they don't. How many times did Harry Arter go away with the Irish and come back injured, Josh King suffered too. Keep under the radar boys !!! (and the bonus is we can all laugh at Lewis Dunk if he plays)
 
If any of our players want a call up they might want to play well on the odd occasion Southgate attends one of our games.....the Huddersfield and Burnley horror shows have been the last two i think.
 
If any of our players want a call up they might want to play well on the odd occasion Southgate attends one of our games.....the Huddersfield and Burnley horror shows have been the last two i think.

I'm intrigued by that rod in your profile pic @Topfarrier, can you post the image so I can see which model it is?
 
I suspect Cockbeard is right: it's because Cookie and indeed most of the first team, have beards and they all look too old. lol
 
If any of our players want a call up they might want to play well on the odd occasion Southgate attends one of our games.....the Huddersfield and Burnley horror shows have been the last two i think.

Spot on. I dread hearing he is in the stand. It goes back further than this too. And yes, he has sat through our worst two 90 mins in recent history. This will have formed a very poor view.
 
Spot on. I dread hearing he is in the stand. It goes back further than this too. And yes, he has sat through our worst two 90 mins in recent history. This will have formed a very poor view.
Am guessing Southgate lives a lot closer to Burnley and Huddersfield than he does Bournemouth.....
 
Cookie is better than Tarkowski and Dunk (and Mawson too for good measure).

Lewis Cook is better than Chalobah, Winks, Dier, Maddison and 12 year old Mason f***ing Mount.

Wilson is in far better form than Welbz and Rashford.

This one will never happen, but for my money, Adam Smith is a better fullback than Danny Rose too.


However, generally speaking, I don't agree with a lot of this squad. Southgate is sitting on a throne of contradictions. If he's sending out a message to clubs that you'll only get called up if you get regular football, then why the f*** has he called up Chalobah, Winks and Welbeck, who have barely played at all this season. Why is Chalobah there instead of Will Hughes, who has kept him out of the team? Why is Mason Mount there? Its an entirely different standard of football. He has never played at the top level of any league. It matters! At least Sancho is doing really well in the Bundesliga. He clearly doesn't rate Wilson, so why is Welbeck there instead of Sturridge, or even, may god help us all, Glenn Murray?

What is even the criteria for getting called up by Southgate? Is it playing well? Is it playing well, and getting gametime (cough cough, Steve Cook, Callum Wilson)? Is it being called Jake Livermore (that was a weird time)? It all seems a bit arbitrary. I guess Ruben Loftus-Cheek isn't good enough anymore either. I don't think he should have gone to the World Cup, personally, but Southgate did. And now all of a sudden he's not good enough? I thought he was building for the future?

This is a squad for games against Croatia (WC Finalists) and Spain, two of the best teams in the world at the moment. These games will have stakes in the weird league thing we're now participating in. Why is he trying to make some Machiavellian point about game time in the media? Call up your best players! Or, if you're going to pick players based on form, call up the players that are IN FORM. Wilson is in form! Steve Cook is in form! Will Hughes is in form! Sturridge is in form! Lewis Dunk is NOT in good form, and neither was James f***ing Tarkowski in the first place, Gareth!

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on the guy; I like some of the picks, but if you're going to pick players either from, or outside of, the established top 6 for international football, they have to have earned it. I don't think Winks, Mount, Chalobah, Dunk, Tarkowski, Welbeck, Rose, Dier, Barkley or Bettinelli have earned it, especially over players like the Cooks, Wilson, Hughes, Sturridge, Murray. He's better at picking players on form than a lot of England managers have been. But that's not saying much.

What this all boils down to, essentially, is that no Bournemouth players have been called up and I'm upset :grinning:. Typical really, decades of players only getting called up from top 6 clubs; the moment we get there, naaahhh.
 
I’m not sure I buy the conspiracies. Too many of our players are too inconsistent for a call up at the moment.

The only one of our English players who should be in the squad, based on his “football DNA” and form, is David Brooks. I wonder if he regrets his choice...
 

You go there to maybe have a read of some views or interesting comments on AFCB from a different perspective and yet by the end of page 2 you're sat there thinking what feckin planet do these muppets come from? It's a constant mantra squealing that Bmth cheat Bmth cheat Bmth cheat etc and then on page 7 you find this nugget: "You're also quoting figures from the accounts when we were in the Championship and completely reliant on Tony's funding."
So the nasty Russian paid for our promotion (and therefore cheated) but Tony Bloom clearly did nothing to bank roll promotion for Hove. Or build them a stadium to give them a massive advantage over most others.
NSC is full of self righteous idiots.
 
I’m not sure I buy the conspiracies. Too many of our players are too inconsistent for a call up at the moment.

The only one of our English players who should be in the squad, based on his “football DNA” and form, is David Brooks. I wonder if he regrets his choice...

Isn't every player inconsistent though? Who currently in the England squad plays great week in week out? With the exception of Messi pretty much every other player on the planet has streaks of form. Surely on current form any English player in our first team should be in the running.
 
Isn't every player inconsistent though? Who currently in the England squad plays great week in week out? With the exception of Messi pretty much every other player on the planet has streaks of form. Surely on current form any English player in our first team should be in the running.


Agreed. Would anybody pick Maguire based on his appearance against us a few weeks back?
 
Funny this, I just saw Troy Deeney outside the office. Had a brief chat, couldn't help but say unlucky on Saturday, as by coincidence I was wearing a Bournemouth tracksuit top as my coat today. He said it was never a 4-0 game but they didn't deserve to take anything from it. I said enjoy your break, but can't understand why he and Wilson aren't in the squad. He kinda rolled his eyes a bit and said he's thinks the ship has sailed for him after nothing in the first post world cup squad, and isn't waiting on the call, was also surprised that Wilson isn't being considered. Got the impression he thinks it's a closed shoip
 

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