sheeponacid

Becketwell is underway.
I think we have a good chance of winning to be honest. There is a lot going on culturally in Derby if you can be bothered to look for it. We're clearly missing a proper performance venue but that will change by 2025 with the one going on Becketwell.
I think the city centre will be a very different place in 2025 and using the City of Culture to relaunch it is a great idea.

No change of thought. Always thought him conservative, and a bit negative. and last night confirmed that he is still reluctant to grab hold of a game when it is there for the taking.  Starting Mount wide on the left, where Sterling had been excelling, and not having a proper right sided attacker was odd, but he clearly didn't know his best player on the right of the pitch all tournament. Grealish and Foden should have been given more game time. Taking off Henderson at the end again was naive - he has a good penalty record, and putting Sancho and saka at 4 and 5 in the penalties was never going to be a good idea. Some experience and mental toughness was needed in that situation. Henderson, Shaw and Walker would have been better picks for penalties when we were at 129 minutes.
Deserves another go, but he is yet to convince me he has anything other than a good rapport with his squad, rather than being game savvy. Got some very good players at his disposal after all.

Anybody else think in part we just over “Eng-Er-Land” it all last night.
Dont get me wrong, games are won and lost on the pitch, but all this ‘it’s coming home’, bandwagoning by opportunistic politicians, the bloody red arrows (how much did that cost for 10 secs worth of telly), royal family and celebrities on screen etc etc. It’s just all a bit tacky and borders on arrogance and holds an expectation that does not help a young bunch of players and makes the downfall so much greater.
We can all get excited, but it was overwhelming beforehand to me. Let the football do the talking and let’s wind the rhetoric back a bit.

Disappointed, but not surprised, to see some crawling out of the woodwork to criticise the manager and the team after the defeat.
Where were you when we beat the Germans?
Where were you when we thrashed Ukraine?
Where we you as we only conceded one goal in the build up to the final?
Where were you when we reached our first final in a generation?
I cannot stomach talk about “negative tactics” from fans who are just waiting for us to fail and revel in “I told you so’s.” The most crushing part of this defeat is that this team had the potential to silence these types, but instead they are basking in it.
duck off.

I was a bit pissed off at full time with some of Southgates decisions, & I do wonder if he wishes he’d never made those last two subs... but hey what the duck do I know about top level football management...nowt...& it’s the first time in my 50 odd years that I’ve had the excitement, hope, & alas ultimately heartbreak of seeing England in a major final.
A huge, huge opportunity missed...yes definitely ... but what a journey, I loved every minute of it (well almost every minute lol).. but hey it’s just a game, the sheep are still grazing on the tops & life’s rich tapestry continues to unfold. 
The best team won... it would of been worse if we’d of been the better team & lost, but quite clearly we wasn’t. 
 

I was a bit pissed off at full time with some of Southgates decisions, & I do wonder if he wishes he’d never made those last two subs... but hey what the duck do I know about top level football management...nowt...& it’s the first time in my 50 odd years that I’ve had the excitement, hope, & alas ultimately heartbreak of seeing England in a major final.
A huge, huge opportunity missed...yes definitely ... but what a journey, I loved every minute of it (well almost every minute lol).. but hey it’s just a game, the sheep are still grazing on the tops & life’s rich tapestry continues to unfold. 
The best team won... it would of been worse if we’d of been the better team & lost, but quite clearly we wasn’t. 
 

I was a bit pissed off at full time with some of Southgates decisions, & I do wonder if he wishes he’d never made those last two subs... but hey what the duck do I know about top level football management...nowt...& it’s the first time in my 50 odd years that I’ve had the excitement, hope, & alas ultimately heartbreak of seeing England in a major final.
A huge, huge opportunity missed...yes definitely ... but what a journey, I loved every minute of it (well almost every minute lol).. but hey it’s just a game, the sheep are still grazing on the tops & life’s rich tapestry continues to unfold. 
The best team won... it would of been worse if we’d of been the better team & lost, but quite clearly we wasn’t. 
 

I watched most of the games in the tournament, maybe only missed 3 or 4 group games.
My excitement actually decreased as it went on and I can't say exactly why. I think it must be because we we awful to watch apart from one game and although I'm disappointed we lost, I'm not one bit "gutted".
The penalties we missed sum it up for me, they were half-arsed, just put your laces through the fecker.
Pickford must be distraught!

Think everyone needs to cool off a little. Going to lock the thread until morning, once we've all gathered our thoughts and disappointments and not aiming them at each other. 

Italy were the better team over the 120 minutes and have been the best team throughout the tournament.

I would rather have lost to two goals in the second half. The choice of penalty takers was incomprehensible and putting two cold players on to take them was ridiculous, let alone asking a child to take the 5th. Shame for the goalkeeper who made a couple of great saves. ???????

Do you have a family?  A nice house?  A reasonable lifestyle?
What about someone that lives in a noisy flat in a crappy area?  Or someone in an abusive relationship?  Or someone that lives alone miles from any family or friends?  I could go on...
Its strange how many people there are that can sit in a nice house, surrounded by family, drinking Belgium beer that don't seem to be able to understand that for others the social interactions of mixing face to face with real people is what keeps them sane. 
Sure for some people working from home is the future - personally I've done it myself for 10+ years and can't imagine going out to work for someone else ever again but I appreciate that I have a great family, a nice house and all the luxuries I want. 
I always think back to the early days of the first lockdown when Sky News ran an article about covidiots, showing a picture of a park full of people - a park that had several tower blocks in the background.  The writer obviously had no clue about anything other than his own lifestyle and the fact that for some people getting out of their home for an hour was an essential part of their day. 
For others lockdowns/working from home has been akin to solitary confinement - or worse.  Whilst productivity may have not taken a nose dive the need to get back to normal, to get out of the house and talk to real people again is paramount. 
To me its seems that the middle class twitterati minority and media classes moaning about Boris opening up again can't see beyond their own privileged lifestyles, which is why they have lost all connection with the working classes.

Sounds good to me. 
The England team isn't ongoing. This group has no past, no failure to live up to the hype. That's why they're different. 
You sound pretty unhappy about the idea of English people being happy about England making a major final with a new and refreshingly humble bunch. 
I mean Derby have threatened to be promoted a lot recently but should that be seen as a negative if they actually achieve it? 
The attitude that you have towards England is one I would expect from a Scotland fan. Its the attitude I'd expect from a Forest fan in the Derby context. 
People have had a poo time recently. Football/sport being back is quite a big deal. Add that to the fact England have made the final and I can see why there are happy people.
I just don't get why some English people are determined to hate on it. This England team hasn't done anything to let anyone down. This manager has done nothing to disappoint anyone. 
And I know if England were knocked out in the group people would say "same old England. Not good enough".
Those same people if England win on Sunday will be saying how lucky they were, how it just shows how bad they've been in the past etc etc. 
No offence but I hope the cringey love in is still bothering you from Monday onwards. 
I certainly don't think you'll see this positivity around Derby this season so there's that to enjoy

This comes across better than your previous post tbh. I still don't agree as those things you attach yourself to Derby are also connected with national identity on a bigger scale using different tools such as language but similar fundamental necessities- it's essentially the basis of Benedict Anderson's work 'imagined communities' that defines how a lot of scholars see national identity. Unless you think we're connected by our difference to the norm which I would suggest is not what connects Derby fans but rather our connection is the fostering of our own norms and identity that binds us together. 

The argument of going against the norm somehow being a prime basis for being a Derby supporter also doesn't make a lot of sense to me, are you saying if Derby made it big and became massive across the globe suddenly you'd lose your attachment to the club? This odd feeling of individuality by defying norms just means you're putting yourself into another category of anti-mainstream culture because it's mainstream which is also surprisingly common amongst a lot of younger people around university age. So you're not really fostering individuality but rather buying into a collective counter culture which ultimately defeats its very purpose. 

No, I don't suddenly start supporting Chelsea etc. in a champions league final because they're not fundamentally representing me, they're representing their club. England players are literally representing us so it's not the same principle really. I also don't think you need to attach a high level of enmity to our opponents in national football just as in club football. 

Wow….must be a barrel of laughs at your house over Christmas….
 
is It Sunday yet….?

I'll be honest, I disagree with almost every word of that.

Summed up nicely. 
We know it was a horrifically soft penalty and we'd all be sick to go out to a decision like that. We have done in previous tournaments. But what are people actually expecting us to say? Forfeit the game? Give Denmark the win?
I''d rather Sterling not dive to win us games because I hate it. Just like I hate our fans boo'ing other nations anthems because I hate that too. Am I daft enough to think its just an English problem? Certainly not but because its us it gets blown out of proportion like everything else. 
 
 

Hypocrisy is non-England fans trying to tell us we should be ashamed of it, or trying to devalue our victory when they think that Maradona's hand ball, Ronaldo's wink, Lampard's ghost goal, Simeone's theatrics are all hilarious.
Show me a football fan (club or international) that has never celebrated a win for their team off the back of a favourable decision and I'll show you a liar.

Also, huge difference between all of those objective errors in officiating and/or miscarriages of justice which was plain for the whole world to see and Sterling's penalty, which you need to slow down to a crawl and see from several angles and look at it a certain way to come to the conclusion he dived. It's massively up for debate. Any contact looks small when you slow it down as slow as most replays I've seen.
Anyone putting that penalty in the same bracket as any of those other instances just can't handle that the best team won and are looking for a narrative which suggests that they shouldn't.

Give It a rest. Enjoy It. 

Lemme guess, Denmark deserved better, we were lucky, not a penalty, shouldn't have taken Grealish off....
If you can't enjoy this I feel sorry for you. 
Denmark created very little and scored from soft free kick. It wasn't a penalty but the one on Kane was. Sterling Still shutting people up! Grealish off and we still created a great chance and it was a walk in the park at the end
Denmark ain't bad but they were never winning that. Didn't do anything like enough 

Denmark are ranked 10th in the World - above Germany, and will stay there by getting to the last 4 of this competition. You're never going to completely control a game against opponents of such quality. 
We were better than them. We dominated for large periods against a very good team. We should be proud of that performance. 

What a night. Was some soft contact with Sterling so pen was always on the cards. Lots of foreign people claiming we cheated but var ruled in our favour. Denmark lucky for the fk.. again soft. Denmark offered very little. Come on England..

I simply can’t believe how much running Sterling did. Engine ? .. that wasn’t and engine it was a turbine generator running off a fusion reactor. Amazing performance. 
 
Denmark were brave, gutsy and never stopped fighting but we deserved that. Best team won.
What a night we have coming