the football thread

[13d]

who was your grandfather?

David Francey

[steve]

who was your grandfather?

David Francey

cool he was a great commentator ... he had a distinctive voice and i listened to his commentaries many times on the radio back in the day. it was a time when it was all about listening to the radio...no live tv games or anything like that. that's cool mate.

[13d]

haha.. wouldn't have expected to find a listener on here, that's nice Steve

champion's league finale tonight.. I've not watched much football this season to be fair but I'll check the game out to see how our new boss's old team gets on

[13d]

Looks like Frank Lampard may become the new Derby manager.. Lampard is apparently a Rangers fan... I wonder if Gerrard and Lampard will lock horns pre-season

[13d]

England are doing alright, eh?

[Fogg]

Unfortunately they've crashed out only two years after Scotland.

[13d]

oops, were * doing alright .. still, can be pretty happy with 3rd if they win today

[Fogg]

I've been saying all along that they're not good enough to justify the hype.

One decent result against a chaotic Panama and everyone thinks it's 1966 again. Tunisia wasn't a convincing win, Colombia went to penalties, Sweden had their fair share of chances too. Then we lost to Belgium, twice.

I enjoyed the ride for as long as it lasted, but the notion that England is truly World class seems a bit wide of the mark to me. Still, it's a step up from 2014 when we scored one point in the qualifying round, so I guess it's all going in the right direction.

[13d]

i think they got as good a draw as they could have hoped for but at the end of the day being a world cup semi-finalist is something to be proud of...

from an outside point of view, it's interesting to watch the hype.. england certainly get carried away, but why not? i'm happy to see them doing well..

rangers are up again in around an hour & half, second leg europa league qualifier vs a team from macedonia.. gerrard's first competitive game was the first leg last week at ibrox following a 6-0 win vs bury in a friendly, rangers are 2-0 up. only played 2 games so far & a lot of activity expected before the end of the transfer window.. gerrard seems to be building a tall team, he could see that we were bullied last season..

got a big boy in from brighton, connor goldson & looking at another big lad from millwall, jake cooper

this macedonian team were better than i expected last week, these games can be tricky.. but i will tempt fate anyway & place £1 on 6-2 rangers

[13d]

..ok.. 0-0 will do

second qualifying round next week - 4 qualifying rounds just to make the group stages! .. some really good teams in there