Ollie Watkins

[Hookeysmith]

Any fitness news on Ollie?

Seems strange there has been no training footage our of Bodymoor this week?

[cdbearsfan]

England expecting to beat Germany isn't arrogant, fucking Hell 🤣

[PeterWithesShin]

England are currently better than Germany. As are France, Spain and Portugal. Probably the Dutch and Belgium are as well. It's not arrogant to be better than someone.

[chrisw1]

In the build-up to the 2021 (2020) Euros, Germany had lost to 6-0 to Spain, 2-1 to North Macedonia, drawn with Denmark and lost to France. 

They did beat Portugal in the Group stage, but even so, they were not considered a good team at the time.

I said England lost to the first good team they played in each tournament.  Beating Germany was a good result, but we were playing a team in very patchy form at best.  We had Ukraine in the quarters, Denmark in the semis and Southgated a loss to Italy in the final, playing 5 at the back and with Grealish and Saka on the bench. 

And this was Southgate's great achievement. 

[Dave]

There it is, there's the weird deluded England arrogance that dismisses everyone else as being no good.

I think we're saying the opposite!

Yep. It's not arrogant really, we're ranked 4th in the world, we should be winning pretty much anyone we face in qualifying and in group stages at tournaments because the system is designed to create that. What England haven't done very well for a while is beat other teams in the top 10 in games that matter.

The post he replied to was that "we've lost to the first good team we've played in every tournament", which is pretty dismissive of the likes of Croatia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Colombia, Switzerland - particularly given those are the sorts of country England have spent most of the previous fifty years not beating in the knockout stages of tournaments.

If he'd said the first better team, that would have been a bit more valid.

The German team at that time were in awful form during a period of transition.  I don't think it's arrogant to say you should mostly expect England to beat the other teams listed, given the depth of our wider pool of players, the strength of our national league and huge levels of funding.   

As mentioned above, it's no different to Villa fans thinking we should mostly beat Burnley or Ipswich.

It is different.

It's the equivalent of saying that of course Villa should have got to the FA Cup Semi-Final last year, because they only had to beat Spurs, West Ham, Cardiff and Preston. Without acknowledging the fact that Villa have a very long tradition of losing in the FA Cup against that sort of side.

I would be relatively confident of a Villa win going into any of those games individually. But thinking that Villa would definitely beat all of Spurs, West Ham, Cardiff and Preston to reach the semi-final because we're just better than them would display, in my opinon, a bit of ignorance as to how tournament football goes.

[Tayls_7]

England expecting to beat Germany isn't arrogant, fucking Hell 🤣

CD, are you seriously suggesting despite all the evidence to the contrary, that football isn't coming home?

[PeterWithesShin]

There's a difference between expecting to beat a side you are better than, and believing that it is the only possible outcome. Expecting to beat Bradford over 2 legs wasn't arrogance, those booking hotels was arrogance.

[cdbearsfan]

Maybe. If we had lost to say, Chelsea, having knocked out teams which are clearly more successful than us like Man U and Arsenal and then said "we lost to the first decent team we played", that would be dismissive and arrogant, and not at all grounded in reality.

It does seem that only winning tournaments is good enough for some England fans which is pretty mental considering their history of not winning tournaments. I'm never entirely sure what they get out of it. Moan all through qualifying, moan when they knock someone out, moan when they get knocked out.

Where's the fun in this hobby?

[cdbearsfan]

England expecting to beat Germany isn't arrogant, fucking Hell 🤣

CD, are you seriously suggesting despite all the evidence to the contrary, that football isn't coming home?

China haven't qualified. ☹️

[PeterWithesShin]

Germany's past success has no relevance to England currently being better than them.

[cdbearsfan]

Sure, just like Villa always losing to Man U has no impact when we play Man U...

[German James]

It does seem that only winning tournaments is good enough for some England fans

Well, that's because that's all there is at that level! With club football, we can get excited about Villa's performances in the league, the domestic cups, European competitions. Then there's league position, the transfer window speculation, players' form over months etc.
With national teams, all that really matters is a few games every couple of years. Which I why I can't bring myself to give a toss about it.

Where's the fun in this hobby?

That fucking band?

[PeterWithesShin]

Villa spent most of history bring better than Man City and Chelsea. Had fuck all relevance to the last 20 years though.

[cdbearsfan]

So we aren't allowed to compare England's record under Southgate to under previous managers because history is irrelevant.

That's convenient.

[PeterWithesShin]

Where have I done that? England were better than Germany when we played, and still are. You're the one claiming that Germany being better in the past has some relevance to their current side.