North London Red

It's a great effort either way! I've seen City at 71 of the current 92 grounds, at 11 clubs who are currently non-league, at 10 former grounds of current 92 clubs, and at Wembley and the Millennium, which I think gives me a total of 94 different grounds with City (counting old and new Wembley as one ground instead of two). Have done a further 9 of the current 92 grounds either with England or as a neutral, so need to tick off 12 more to complete the current 92. Haven't worked out the overseas ones but have seen England in 41 different countries so far.

Fair comment, I missed them. Which I think means 80 is the current maximum if talking strictly about the current 92 league grounds.

Unless I'm missing a pre-season friendly at Newport or Oxford, I thought 81 was the maximum possible at present, unless anyone managed to sneak in to the behind-closed-doors game we played at Brentford's new stadium during the last Covid affected season? Either way, a very impressive total given it's been a long time since we played at some of the current 92 (e.g. Lincoln, Exeter). The 11 of the current 92 that I don't think we've played at (but stand to be corrected): West Ham, Brentford*, Oxford, Barrow, Morecambe, Accrington, AFC Wimbledon, Harrogate, Salford, Newport, Sutton Utd. * We have played at Brentford but no fans were at the game.

This made me laugh.

Early odds from BetVictor: https://www.betvictor.com/en-gb/sports/240/meetings/441511110/events/2057263400?market_group=3538 At the time of posting Steve Cotterill is the 4-1 favourite, with Nathan Jones and Frank Lampard joint second favourites at 6-1. No doubt these odds will change over the coming hours and days.

The message changed between the Australia game (where the scoreboard and PA announcement made reference to victims on both sides of the conflict - pic below) and the Italy game, where Sweden and Israel were mentioned but not Palestine. For what it’s worth the silence was much more ‘silent’ at the Australia game than at the Italy game.

Isn’t there a rule that you can’t have tickets for two games on the same day? There certainly has been in previous tournaments, aside from Qatar, where the rule was modified to ‘you can’t have tickets for consecutive games on the same day’ (but you could for games 1 and 3 if there were games with three different kick off times on the same day).

Not true in Bull’s case. Top flight debut - 1986. England debut - 1989.

Steve Bull did play in the top flight, for West Brom in 1986.

I'd say the national sport of South Africa is football, by a long way. Rugby is probably the most popular among the white population, but they account for only about 8% of the overall population of the country. Football is far more popular among black South Africans.

For the North Macedonia at Old Trafford game, yes (it was a Harry Styles concert that meant Wembley was unavailable), but not for all the other examples. The two games at Middlesbrough in 2021 and the two games at Molineux in 2022 weren’t due to clashes at Wembley as far as I can recall. The FA said in 2014 that most games would need to be played at Wembley for the following 8-9 years (link below) but there have been nine I can recall during that period not at Wembley, and the North Macedonia game is the only one I can remember where Wembley was unavailable (but I stand to be corrected on that). https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/29045977

Mine was £25. As for why people go…in many cases it’ll be for loyalty points towards the next Euros or World Cup (the more games you go to, the higher the likelihood of being guaranteed for tournaments, or for the more appealing away qualifiers). In other cases it’ll be to keep a run going. Or to catch up with friends from around the country who support other clubs, have a beer or two pre and post game, and discuss plans for Skopje next month and for Germany next summer (assuming we don’t mess up qualification, that is).

Last time they came to Ashton Gate in 2019 - pause the video just before 5.20 and you’ll see the Atyeo is mostly empty seats:

Don’t think that’s the case. There have been quite a few recent home games not at Wembley….North Macedonia at Old Trafford just 4 months ago, two games at Molineux last year, plus other games in recent times at Southampton, Leicester, Leeds, Sunderland, two at Middlesbrough, and one at Manchester City.

Tonight will be my 212th England game. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been at an England game where the opposition anthem has been booed by England fans (mostly against Scotland or Wales, where it is reciprocated, not that that excuses it in any way).

I think you could make a strong case for Kyle Walker. Bukayo Saka too…at the France game back in Qatar, the French players were visibly nervous whenever Saka got the ball. Stones, Foden and Alexander-Arnold not too far behind (maybe not all world class right now, but Foden and Trent A-A may still become world class).

View from the away end tonight. Enjoyed that!

A picture from the closing stages of the game in Wrocław on Saturday. It’s a great city. Just arrived in Glasgow for tomorrow’s game. Thankfully a few degrees milder than both Wroclaw and London have been for the last few days.

I think Kane thinks he can break the Jimmy Greaves all time top flight goalscoring record. He's currently 144 goals shy. 25 goals per season over the next six seasons (assuming he stays fit) would get him there. Maybe a long shot, but by no means impossible. I read today that Kane's wife is currently pregnant. He may have other reasons for not wanting to move overseas right now.

It was an impulsive last minute decision to go, made after we won the semi final on Wednesday. Georgia was one of the only countries in Europe I haven’t visited, which helped swing it. I found some flights which weren’t too badly priced (the boy band Blue were on both of my flights, as they were performing in Batumi last night), and managed to get a match ticket yesterday.

My view for the evening. Am told it’s sold out so the stadium should fill up over the next hour.

I don’t think it’s Shearer’s record Kane is targeting. I reckon he’s going for the all time top flight record (Jimmy Greaves), and I think he thinks he can get it. It would need him to stay fit pretty much every season into his mid-30s, but it’s not an impossible target if he keeps getting 30 per season. That said, if Real Madrid come calling I sincerely hope he goes there.

West Ham knocked Sevilla out of the Europa League last season.

He got them to the semi finals of the last World Cup, which is as far as they’ve ever gone, and didn’t have the luxury of home advantage. Hopefully the Lionesses go two stages further Down Under in a few weeks but I think saying he was awful based on equalling Mark Sampson (in terms of stage of elimination) and bettering every other Lionesses manager is unfair.

That third goal for West Ham now means that if Everton draw against Bournemouth, Leeds would have to win by a three goal margin against Tottenham to overhaul Everton. Not impossible, but realistically Leeds have to hope Bournemouth win at Everton (and also that Leicester somehow don’t pull two results out of the bag).