Yngwie

Duku certainly looks a handful, but I’m wondering if he’s one of those forwards who needs a lot of chances before he scores a goal. Gets in good positions, though.

England are a very good side but as usual, the only thing coming home for them is disappointment.

Home advantage and the match officials on their side, it seems! Modern day equivalent of a dodgy Russian linesman (Azerbaijani, actually) is a dodgy VAR official.

I would strongly recommend this Robbo interview as essential listening for any ICT fan. Great insight into what’s been happening at the club since he returned, and during the Covid era in particular including openness about his personal circumstances and what the new role involves. And probably the easiest interview Riley will ever do, no need to ask questions, Robbo just talks and talks.

“Black trim matters” movement launched 😀

For anyone else who was wondering, Broadfoot turns 37 next month.

Another player we have in common with Hereford is Eric Odhiambo. After leaving us for Denizlispor (how did that happen?!) he went to Hereford before rapidly dropping down the leagues to the likes of Kidlington and North Leigh. Still only 32

Both ought to do well in a part time context. Storey has pace but not a huge amount else. Several years ago he scored a few goals over the course of a few weeks and has been living off that ever since. Vincent is a better all round footballer and has played a number of midfield positions with us, but has been living off the cup winning goal he scored from a tremendous run up the pitch from emergency right back.

As Robert says, any concern is not about the result but the fact that most of our first team isn’t ready to appear in a friendly yet.

Ex Utd? That’s true but he’s been at County for the last 3 years. We also had him on trial in 2010 after he was released by Newcastle and I think he played some pre-season friendlies against HL sides.

If Doran hasn’t signed a new contract I thought he would have to play as a trialist, but he was a named player.

Ah, but if Ollie McBurnie hadn’t been injured…. 😄 The current English/Australian partnership looked like it had potential and I still think Adams could be the highest quality striker we’ve had for many a year, although that might not be saying much. Dykes is the type of forward who “does a job” but that job will never involve scoring many goals at international level, certainly not against the calibre of team we will have to beat to improve from where we are.

Same old, same old, but still painful. Saved our poorest performance til last, unfortunately, and just weren’t in it in the second half against a side who were ultimately a class above. Really poor finishing from us throughout this tournament, just when I thought we had created a team with goals in it.

My daughter’s team were playing in a cup final yesterday at Airdrie FC. Not even parents allowed to attend, whilst a few miles away Hampden will have 12,000 tonight, and last week 20,000+ fans went for a street party and long journeys on public transport, without a word of criticism. Seems so inconsistent but I suspect having a few dozen parents attending would have required a heap load of admin and risk assessments and procedures that would have been required, and it just wasn’t worth the effort for the organisers.

England players now mightily relieved that they didn’t get within 2 metres of Gilmour!

At least they aren’t based in Scotland, where this would have automatically meant the whole squad isolating for 10 days, which is why the Czech and Croatian squads cancelled their training bases here very late on.

Unbelievable, just when things are looking up, Billy Gilmour tests positive for Covid and has to isolate for 10 days, and who knows how many others in the squad were close contacts who will also be unavailable.

I think it was world cups 1974, 82, 86, 90 and 98 where winning the final group match guaranteed qualification but we didn’t win any of them. Expectations were highest v Morocco and that ended 0-3. On the plus side, we ALWAYS win our last group match at the Euros!

And what a player John McGinn is by the way, he’s everywhere.

Gotta be happy with a point there, 44th in the world away to 4th ranked, and matching them.

John Hughes: “There was no chance whatsoever that Billy McKay was leaving and there is no chance he’s leaving in the summer either.”

It’s a sister company of webuyanycar.com and Rylan Clark-Neal (ask some young folk, Kingsmills!) does adverts for them. Perhaps he’s even booked flights already to present us with the league trophy next May.

cinch are the new sponsors of the Championship. Don’t ask me why it is cinch rather than Cinch.

These days for Billy Mckay it’s maybe not so much a case of “He scores when he wants” as “He scores a perfectly reasonable proportion of the chances provided to him and is as good a striker as we can realistically expect taking into account our club’s current league status and limited financial resources”, although admittedly that’s not quite as catchy to chant.