Julius

Haha, the idea of them knocking it sideways and backwards for a good five minutes before passing it back to Pickford to launch it aimlessly forward gives me a good chuckle

Funnily enough, watched the match last night with a mate at a pub and between Sky Sports News and pre-match and post-match spiel for the Germany game, they kept showing snippets of England "training"...and I pointed it that every time they did, it looked like they were barely doing anything. Obviously we only see snippets at times like that, but why not have a bit of training propaganda? Show Bellingham crossing it into Kane for a half-volley just to make it look like they're working on things as much as they say they are?

Oh dear. Can't say it hasn't been coming. Good job Slovakia. Good to see us behind, weirdly - we seem far too comfortable leading or drawing. If this now doesn't light a fire up under them, nothing will, and at which point we'll deserve to go out.

What a ball from Bellingham. Trippier absolutely had the time to take a touch. Slovakia are tearing us apart on the wings as they look to cut in/fizz it in. Not quite sure what Walker needs to do to be taken out of our starting lineup, but he's been very shaky at the start. Aye, I do think when it happens as we progress in tournaments it's where the unrealistic expectations seem to get buoyed on and the majority suddenly think we're untouchable. And I also think that buoying on from people jumping on the bandwagon like you say is where it can go too far. It's why I'm glad we didn't win the last Euros, we didn't deserve to with how English fans behaved at Wembley that day. Some of those will be crazed diehards, sure, but so many turned up "just cos"

Didn't realise both of today's matches were on ITV. Urgh. Yeah, would definitely take Howe over Potter at this point to be honest, simply because he's proven he can string results together at more than one club at this point. I feel like he'd be able to get away with not being undermined by the current crop of players, too. At the same time, it's also just one of those where I think no English manager really has the necessary knockout tournament experience at the absolute top level (Europe) or elite level experience at one of the top clubs to win one of these things as it stands, compared to so many other . When Germany have Nagelsmann (who could easily be back at Bayern if he wanted I feel like), Italy have had people in the past like Conte and Mancini, and currently have Spalletti (Italy have been a confusing mess long before he turned up lol), and France have Deschamps, you just look at what they've each managed in their domestic leagues, cups, and in Europe at club level and it dwarfs anything an English manager has done in the last...I don't even know how many years, honestly. Gareth almost treats it like we're in a relegation battle despite being in a cup, grinding out results. Either way, I think he's got to go. Anyways, I expect a win tonight but I doubt it'll be pretty, and if it somehow is, watch how quickly people forget these first three matches and it be "it's coming home" once again.

I guess so thing is, it's nothing personal, but strictly business – I just don't think we can afford to waste the current pool of talent we have and the FA should really just look to throw money at a world class manager with a vision for attacking football. Unfortunately, I don't think I have an English manager in mind for us when I say this. For all the money invested in grassroots football and the ramping up of the integration of futsal and its style in a development capacity over here stretching back to the early 2010s, we now have the talent (on paper) to win a tournament and beat out other major nations – but that same investment really hasn't been made in the management space. So we're left with Gareth who feels more like the FA's poster boy and someone who was in the right place at the right time above all else. Every single time I watch Sané he does something ridiculous, whether it be launch a shot into Row Z when there are other options on, misplace a through ball, or do these ugly half step-overs like he did yesterday before passing the ball backwards all of 2 yards. Then again, he also had a back tattoo of himself, so I'm not really sure how high we should be setting the bar in terms of expectations for him

Don't think any major European nation have been as confusing to follow as Italy since the turn of the century. Honestly, assuming we go through, I'd much rather go out to Slovakia than Switzerland. Think the wrong lessons are going to be taken away from the tournament if we lose to the team that beat Italy and held Germany.

Reminder that the Prime Remastered and Dread sale comes to an end on Sunday!

Another Metal Gear Production Hotline video (01) is dropping today at 12:00 BST: This is probably just another Snake Eater update or some update on the continued work towards fixes for Master Collection Vol. 1, right? There's no way they'd have Master Collection Vol. 2 or a Metal Gear Rising remaster ready to announce, right?

A rather late round of impressions videos have just gone up, including one from Digital Foundry: Wonder what that scheduled delay is about?

Over 5 million players have checked out the Realm of Shadow in Shadow of the Erdtree, close to a 20% attachment rate compared to sales for the base game. Pretty astounding considering the type of game that this is and the requirements of needing to take out Radahn and Mohg before accessing the DLC to begin with – probably 2 of the 3 toughest Shardbearer fights in the game in my opinion, after Malenia and ahead of the other 3 Shardbearer fights we get with Morgott, Rennala and Rykard?

My my, what do we have here? A remastered Star Wars game releasing this summer out of the blue without being a PlayStation Classic? Coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox One, Series X|S and Steam on 1st August 2024. Some details on the visual improvements compared to the original: And some PS5 exclusive features: I already own this on my PlayStation from the Star Wars classics bundle I got back when I got my PS4 all those years ago, so I'll wait to see how it's received and how much it goes for I think. Especially because it's Aspyr.

We're not quite out of the Not-E3 woods yet, folks – Capcom Next has been announced for this coming Monday, focusing exclusively on three upcoming titles: Think I'll give this one a pass but from the impressions I watched and heard about Kunitsu Gami over the last few weeks, seems to be one of those smaller games more akin to a PS2 title of yore (pretty sure someone straight up referred to it as a "long lost Capcom title for the PS2" in their impressions), so I can imagine it being of interest to some here.

Nintendo are going a bit nuts with the icons – four waves of two icons have been announced to tie into the release of Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, updating on a weekly basis and starting today.

Free monthly games for July will be:

Poor. Poor. Poor. Subs looked good but were brought on far too late, and we've rode our luck tonight in more ways than one to avoid Germany and that side of the tournament tree. Our group sucked.

England seem to want it more than they have the last two games, but on the night, Slovenia seem to want it more than us. Slovenia look really scary on the counter and our passing has been sloppy at times. Also swear they've said "spicy backpass" or some permutation of it a good two or three times now. Shut up. Please. I beg.

Lee Dixon still doing his best to draw out my hatred for him. How the hell he thought it was Saka offside and not Foden at first beats me.

Aye – Portugal are on that side of the tree, too, so it's safe to say it's absolutely stacked right now. Anyways, moment of truth. Time to see if switching Trent out for Gallagher makes all the difference

Really poor from France. Late penalty shout maybe, but it would've been unfair to Poland to give it. France have yet to score with one of their own players from open play. Which is crazy. We all thought Austria would win this group, right? anyways, now if England come 2nd we get Germany and if we come first there's a chance we get the Netherlands. Great.

You play Upamecano, you concede that you're probably going to give something silly away. Poor pick from Deschamps and France are holding on here after Lewa's equaliser. 7 according to Opta, vs 11 in total in 2020/21: That stat of ⅔ of total own goals at Euros coming in either the 2020/21 or 2024 tournament is mental.

Kind of crazy part is, just having watched this video, I don't think they actually mentioned one of the most egregious parts of the trailer visually -- you can straight up see the border of an alpha texture. Spotted by Digital Foundry in last week's Direct Special (linked to specific point in video) Crazy. I hate that my reaction to this is just to point at the Battlefront Classic Collection put out by Aspyr earlier this year, which weighed in at over 60 GB! It's great and all that these legacy titles are able to stick around with these various ports and remasters, but man, the fact that so many of them are phoned in with ballooned file sizes due to terrible optimisation, or the prices they come out for, is a bit gutting. Hopefully Nintendo take note of the reception and make sure the finished game is delivered at a higher bar of quality than it seems to be currently meeting.

Couldn't find a thread for the original release, but feel like it might warrant one now - originally released back in 2022 by Digital Eclipse to commemorate Atari's 50th anniversary, Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is being expanded on this October, and said expanded version is also getting a physical release. Yep, still a lovely cover!

It was an own goal, sure, but Austria are now 1-0 up against Netherlands, meaning Austria are currently top of the group over France (who are still 0-0 with Poland). First 10 minutes, mind you, but could be an interesting one...