Frederick

Be interesting to see how this one pans out, like so many of his high priced English contemporaries, Johnson seems to have been in arrested development for a good little while. Not that he was doing badly at City as such but at 25 he needs proper game time where he's central to the play, not just cameos to tire out teams that are already 3-0 down.

I fail to see much drama in this scenario. Van Persie wanted to leave, plain and simple. Arsenal made him a better offer, bought two highly talented attacking players to play alongside him and he said "thanks but no thanks". He has one year left on his contract, a rancid history of injury and is 29. What the hell else do you do but sell him for as much as possible? Force him to stay? That's worked so well in the past.

I want it on the record that I was planning on calling my team Before the Devil Knows You're Fred but alas, the silly character limit prevented such majesty.

Okay, thy deed is done. Michael, you may have to send some reminders to the usual gang.

Can't bring myself to think too much about fantasy football just quite yet but I will be there in due course to defend my double crown. Hopefully my "human values" (as "AVB" would say) will shine on through!

Nervous about tonight's game, been here too many times before. The 2006 semi was the last time I genuinely felt heart broken by a game of football, don't want to go through all that again. I'll say 1-0 Hummels and hope for the best.

Hold on, was he meaning to say xenophobic when he says homophobic or was he referring to Antonio Cassano's recent, ill conceived comments? Its hard to know what the former Sloop John B crooner is trying to say. Regardless, it merely reinforces what I said on the previous page, there will always be a group of jackals n' jokers who will look at a career like Pirlo's, a man who's won three Serie A titles, two Champions Leagues and a little something called the 'World Cup' (I assume its one of those pre-season tournaments in the Far East, haven't checked) and say "yes, but have you played in the greatest league in the world?" or maybe to be witty, "I'd like to see him do that on a wet Tuesday night at Stoke".

Revving myself up for Thursday in the only appropriate manner...

Enough was enough, there's only so many ways you can dupe your way through a tournament. The second half and extra time were utter torture and really you'd have preferred the Italians to have just put away one of their many chances and altogether avoided the seemingly obligatory penalty shootout defeat. We are what we are and it aint a lot but hey, better to be there than not at all.

A few weeks ago I was reading on a Villa fansite some bloke saying that he hoped we'd never sign, get this, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, because he's a bit of a so and so and really he's not as good as everybody says. He was completely serious, too. Truly barking mad stuff, I at least imagine that particular brand of lunacy stems from the "if you haven't played in the Premier League, you have an incomplete career" school of dumb thought, but as for Carragher, what excuse does he have? Was he himself not an active footballer in the years 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009? Was it all just a horrible dream, Jamie? Was it actually Liverpool who won three titles in a row and was it actually Robbie Fowler who scored the opening goal of the 2008 Champions League final? Tell me about Michael Owen's 60 goal season at Real Madrid. Tell me about Cristiano Ronaldo's utterly pants performance for England against the USA at the last World Cup. You can't do it, can you, Jamie, CAN YOU?!

Who on earth deemed it necessary to photoshop such a lovely face in such a brutal manner?

I remember having to endure the charmless Alexi during the 2006 World Cup. Every European team was deemed "overrated" faster than you can say boo to a goose while poor ol' Ghana were deemed such nobodys that he wouldn't even entertain the idea that the USA might not beat them. Obviously Ghana then won. Anyway, maybe he was more open minded when they met again in 2010?

What was the Carra-Keano showdown like? I assume Our Jamie regards Ronaldo as a preening, poncey carthorse who has one trick and thus Shankly would have sold him to Stockport to teach him a 'lesson'.

Terrible game tonight, as soon as I saw the inexplicable French line-up I knew they'd had it. Spain were functional, bordering on the tedious; France were simply despicable.

I think 2010 represented the nadir in terms of the pundits, particularly the BBC ones who's sense of comfort seemed unbearably smug. Someone seems to have had a quiet word. Meanwhile I've found the ITV "gang" a lot more tolerable in the last couple of years. Roy Keane's utter contempt for 98% of humanity is a nice change of pace and a nice counterbalance to Roberto Martinez's Tony Robbins audiobook style positivity. Obviously Strachan's awful but I assume that's the point.

Keown and Mark Bright are so awful that I end up almost longing for the surly one liners of Lawro. Then within a few minutes of reacquainting myself with Lawro and Guy Mowbray's "cagey" banter I begin to contemplate the slow release of death. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Jonathan Pearce has been particularly awful this tournament, his delivery is incredibly grating, I honestly preferred his charmless shouty Channel 5 days, now he sounds like he's studying the line readings of William Shatner in a bid for gravitas. Go back and watch the 1966 World Cup final and listen to Kenneth Wolstenholme and his ability to space out the commentary in a humble yet elegant manner and weep for what we as a people have become.

Weird, I was looking at this yesterday, conjured up by using presumably the same kind of tedious data methods. To me, this one is far more suspect in terms of the line-up but anyway, the whole "fascinating" guff can be read about here http://www.whoscored.com/Blog/nte8qwbtke6xtgezaspbqg/Show/Euro-2012-Focus-WhoScoreds-Team-of-the-Group-Stages

Christ, what a terrible game. Ukraine are rubbish, England are RANCID, the line judge is a bloody thieving genius. A marvellous night out, basically.

And with that the "Russia are my dark horse" brigade can quietly slink off to their damp basements once more. Poland were dreadful tonight after the first twenty minutes, the Czechs probably couldn't believe their luck in the second half. And as for Greece, oh Lordy, surely a quarter final against the Germans. Could Newsnight's Paul Mason handle such a thing?!?

You like to think that the near nightmare that tonight became will stand England in good stead. Technically they're subpar, they can't play keep ball for toffee and defensively they often look bullied but they have a bit of genuine craft when they need it and sometimes that's enough to get you over the line. Young's been a huge disappointment so far, Hart isn't commanding the six yard area at all, in fact set pieces in general are tormenting us; but hey, four points from two games is nothing to grumble about. I suspect the home crowd won't allow Ukraine to fall as flat as they did in the second half against France today so its still a pressure cooker situation but one that we've got to look at positively. Other notes: The BBC were much nicer about Hummels the second time around. Good to see Olof buzzing all over the place tonight, you've just gotta love the guy.

Robben is a walking, talking, living, breathing nightmare and has been since the second he stepped up to take the penalty at Dortmund in April.

P.S shame on the BBC for endlessly badgering Mats Hummels during the Portugal game.

England did well all things considered. I would have liked to have seen Milner and Young swap positions during the second half for a little bit more impetus but otherwise everything was pretty solid, more so before Parker went off knackered. Be interesting to see how Sweden change things up for the next game, hopefully England can get a stranglehold on possession and really get at what looked a fairly so-so defence (sorry Olof, I still love you).

When you're spewing asinine thoughts in a pink shirt them type of things are just not that important!