Rob1981

As if anyone still cares what Sven Goran Eriksson thinks

Oh so it seems countries have to submit a "preliminary" squad to FIFA by tomorrow. Can have 35-55 names in it, then your final squad of 26 can only come from this long list. Seems utterly pointless when there is still four weeks of club football to be played.

LADS IT’S STARTING

Still blows my mind that former Chesterfield defender Rob Page is going to be leading a team at the World Cup. See he's upped his interview game as well, fondly remember this gem when we were building our new ground: "The wife can do her shopping" FFS.

Say what you like about him working for Bein, at least it keeps him off ITV some of the week. We should all be grateful.

Do you think Qatar get more criticism because they have, you know, BOUGHT THE WORLD CUP? Wait until Neville finds out UAE and Saudi aren’t hosting it.

You say that, but when it's a straight choice between dealing with your work emails or watching Croatia v Morocco at 10am on a weekday... that's no choice at all.

Interesting with the talk about preparation time (or lack of). I did notice a few countries have managed to shoehorn friendlies into that last week: Tue 15/11 Iraq v Belgium Wed 16/11 Poland v Chile UAE v Argentina Oman v Germany Saudi Arabia v Croatia Mexico v Sweden Thu 17/11 Ghana v Switzerland Japan v Canada Iraq v Costa Rica Portugal v Nigeria Jordan v Spain Fri 18/11 Cameroon v Panama Belgium v Egypt Bahrain v Serbia So these are wedged in between the big leagues breaking on Sunday 13th and the World Cup starting on Sunday 20th... Belgium playing twice () even though most countries are not playing at all.

What? Literally makes no sense. I like Christmas, but I wouldn't want it three times a year. The World Cup is special because it doesn't come around very often. Ergo most of the time players want to play in it above everything else. But talk about "having your cake and eating it"... this is exactly what the clubs do. Happy to add another zero on a transfer fee because a player has had a good World Cup. Or they go and shift their club shirts and make their money in Egypt or South Korea or Senegal because they've signed one of the stars of the national team. But god forbid they might need to leave a bit of space in the calendar for these matches to actually happen.

That's fine until you realise the players would rather be at the WC than playing for their middling teams chasing 12th place or whatever. And there will be long list of them missing it, some of whom probably go through their whole careers now and never get another chance.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it would be a LOT better if there was more of a lead in time. Put a three week break in between the domestic fixtures and the start of the WC and the PL would be finishing at the end of this month. Then you've got chance to build up to the WC in the press and get everyone excited and for the countries to play a friendly or two. Plus you wouldn't have top players missing it at the last minute because of minor injuries with a short recovery time. And while you're at it you could put it back to 32 days long instead of 28 days long... then you're not making the players play with a short turnaround time in between group games. And you're not sticking four games on a day instead of three in the first week and having the TV audiences cannabilise each other. People will blame FIFA and the Qataris for the scheduling obviously, but the big leagues have known this has been coming for 12 years. And the PL were only prepared to budge their start date by a week I mean I didn't want it in Qatar and I didn't want in November. But both of these things could have been managed a lot better if the elite clubs and leagues had been more flexible.

WORLD CUP ANNUAL LEAVE IS BOOKED.

Well I'm convinced.

I don't know why anyone is even surprised by Neville's hypocrisy any more. Let's not forget he thinks he can fix the problem of unsustainable football clubs by, er, bankrolling an unsustainable football club.

Now you're talking.

As if he's going to flag the issues with Qatar on a Qatari-owned broadcaster

Spain and Portugal going for the sympathy vote then. Just bolt another country in even though they are nowhere near either other.

Do we need to start making a list of any big players that are going to be missing? Any high profile injuries I’ve not picked up on?

BBC getting in on the act with a ‘50 days to go’ video: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/63098359 I thought this was going to kickstart 50 daily clips counting down with a different goal on BBC Sport each day. Sadly not. They’ve just stuck the last 50 England goals into the same VT, then gone back to talking about Brighton or Leicester or whoever. That said, you do get to see Darren Anderton pinging that goal in against Colombia.

Well actually it's 97 days until the World Cup. a) because I forgot to post this on Saturday; and b) because FIFA have just moved the opening game from a Monday morning and pulled it forward to the Sunday night But here's somewhere for the big build up and to share some World Cup nostalgia. And yeah, yeah, it's in Qatar and that sucks. But comparing World Cups is like comparing your children. Even the worst one is magical. And let's be honest, there's never really been a time when the World Cup hasn't been largely mismanaged and mostly corrupt. Anyway here's Bergkamp banging that goal in at France 98. Come on people, post some more WC goals and stuff.