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I was wondering what you were confident about, Gavroche, but I looked back in the thread to see that you tipped Italy! A cliché it may be, but Italy are 'always there-or-thereabouts'. For me, both teams played better last night than in the 0-0 draw at the 2012 Euros. England are still very much in it. Despite all the media pundits proclaiming that the Uruguay game is a 'must win', it needn't necessarily be the case. It's more of a 'must not lose'! A draw followed by a win against Costa Rica could well be enough. But, overall, it's been an excellent tournament so far. I actually watched 5 football matches yesterday...went to the Muir of Ord United v. Golspie Stafford, Highland Amateur Cup game and got home just as the first of the 4 World Cup games was starting. Football heaven!

With a lost dressing room and a personality that clearly showed that he would also throw players under the bus if things did not improve in the short term he was cooked from the start. Empathy and diplomacy seems to have gone under that bus as well as far as his motivational efforts were concerned. It has also occurred to me that the Hibs players sussed him out even before he arrived at Easter Road. They knew the background to his arrival and the way it was , IMHO, engineered well in advance of his departure from ICT. If I am correct, they did not trust him from the start and contempt for the man after he sat in the stand with the Hibs management to watch the last Hibs V ICT game could have made them really cynical about this fella. Especially when he threatened their jobs.... that was probably the final straw for the players and the straw that broke Terry butcher's management back. The Hibs players did seem to work very hard to rescue the season but psychologically it's very probable that their heart was not in it under TB . And that MAY be one of the significant reasons why Leann dumped him before the new season started. As I said before, she is an intuitive person I think and realised that for the Hibees T B was a loser. J Hughes is a straight shooter compared to T Butcher and we are finally lucky that all has been revealed in the comparison between the two Managers.

One subtle difference DD. Scottish media aren't networked. If Scotland are playing you get your own commentators for the English regions. If England are playing we get Clive Tyldesley....... But yes, I think most of it is healthy banter and the hatred thing is exaggerated by media looking for a few idiots to provide a 'man bites dog' story. If there was as much anti-Englishness as the Daily Mail would have us believe, no English person would ever want to live here. I wish the England lads well, the same guys I watch on MOTD every week. But if Scotland aren't there, the emotional side is completely absent.

Dougal posts