Good luck to them telling that to the rest of the world...

Coming from behind? Methinks the first team could learn a thing or two there...

I agree, 48 teams will be excessive.

Iran must be absolutely loving the group they've been given then. Us, the 'Great Satan' USA, and even Wales are part of Great Britain. Short of Israel being in there it couldn't be much more of a hate fest for them.

🤣🤣🤣

Giggs - 64 caps Mike England - 44 caps

Yeh if people don't fancy watching certain fixtures that'll brook no argument from me, personal taste (and I'm probably in the same boat, bit busy this week). But I think it's in the wider interests of football to have it in the current format. I'd say of the ones you listed, Qatar and Serbia might spring a surprise. Qatar as the host nation...yes they're abysmally bad but you should never rule out a home nation, and Ecuador are nothing special. Serbia's style might cause problems for Brazil if they're disciplined (admittedly I'm thinking of old Serbia, not seen them play in years...again one of the benefits of more nations at a WC). Anyway when it gets to the knockout stages you'll see more exciting games on offer. And if you don't, it's because some of those underdogs have sprung a surprise.

I feel this argument is a bit like saying the FA Cup should only be the Prem and maybe the Championship. I like that lesser footballing nations get their chance to shine on the world stage. It instils a bit of pride and can promote interest in football. Sometimes it helps certain talents be found that otherwise wouldn't be. And it leaves open the potential for some giant killing and shock results. I also think those lesser footballing nations are often better than given credit for. I think the global profile of the game and interest in playing has risen, standards rising with it, but people are often stuck in old fashioned views of how good these countries are, along with a view that if a country's players aren't featuring in the top European leagues they must be shit. It's very unlikely any of these sides will win the whole competition (mind you, who fancied Greece to win the Euros that time?), but I bet there are at least some shock results this WC.

As I posted above, 6,500 migrant workers have not died building the stadiums. As the article you quoted reveals lower down, 37 have. And that's a bit of a stretch too.

Finished 1-1. Good result since we had 10 men since the 42nd minute (Harlock sent off), which I've only just seen in the match report. I wasn't watching it. Fielded an inexperienced team. Never even heard of 'Litherland', who started, I'm guessing in defence.

Rovers 1 up, scored late in the game, own goal. Maybe 5 mins left.

I only really use betfred, coral and skybet, can't find odds on this game on any of those three.

I appreciate the principled stance, but apparently the death tolls reported are hugely exagerrated. They're basically the number of total migrant workers who have died in Qatar (from all professions, and for all reasons) between 2010 and 2019. Well, the 15k figure is, the 6.5k figure you've got is the ones from just India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Apparently only 3 have actually died on World Cup construction sites (not counting related projects like new roads, hotels etc), rising to 40 if non-work-related deaths of construction workers are included. Qatar has problems with human rights and treatment of migrant workers, no question, and should never have been awarded this WC, but the figures we've been hearing are highly misleading. If they were really as high as that, I wouldn't watch either. https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-many-people-have-died-building-the-qatar-world-cup/a-63763713

On the other hand, our players are knackered because of the fixture congestion caused by the World Cup.

I think this is the most pertinent question of all. I'd almost forgotten that he said this, due to the way we have played since. My only explanation for why this has happened is I think we perhaps play around at the back in an attempt to draw the opposition onto us, leaving space for the counter-attacking that actually suits our game. I've had to miss a lot of games lately due to work commitments, but from those I've seen and heard about, it seems like our success in games hinges almost entirely on whether this works. If teams press us high effectively, it's suicide and we get bummed. If they try to close us down but do it badly, we get to hit them on the counter. Might explain why we either win or lose, as we effectively have a single point of failure.

I don't think it's got anything to do with him knowing how much it means to the fans, whether he does or doesn't. It's not like he's going to have intentionally made the wrong decisions because he thought this game meant less to us than it did. He made the decisions he thought might carry the day, and they absolutely didn't. That's plenty enough for him to be pilloried, we don't need to analyse whether he knows what it means to us.

We tried to have him play like that last season, and he really wasn't very good at it unfortunately.

A bloke that JoeH has worked with before tweeted about getting the job. But I've not seen an official announcement personally.

Neither Wharton brother starting in the derby against the dingles? Not so sure about that.

Six years huh? One more and the dingles would need both hands to count it.

Valid points. It's a tricky one...also worth considering that our second half of the season collapse was a Mowbray staple. We don't know if JDT is prone to the same. I think BBD is also more important to the team than Rothwell was. Without him our goalscoring options are a tad threadbare. I'd back him to be more professional about sticking around for another 6 months too. Whichever choice is made about him, the only way it doesn't come in for criticism is if we get promoted.

What GB would accept and what Venkys would accept may be two entirely different propositions.

Watching the sheer amount of penalties there, with only the last one missed, is just ridiculous.

Yep, I was about to post after JRC scored that I'd been nervous about most of these takers but they'd all delivered...decided not to post it as I knew I'd jinx it!

Yep, you've got to be really good at those to make them work. Think a lot of players believe they're better than they are these days.