Did anyone else have the misfortune to suffer the unprofessional display by Lineker, Wright, Shearer and Hansen on Saturday. It shows up the reason why I enjoy seeing the England football team fail in tournaments - it is purely the attitude of the media around them and not the players themselves.

At half time they were ripping the piss out of Andorra, claiming that any decent striker should expect a double hat-trick against them and calling the left back a fourteen year old midget. Apparently Ian Wright fancied his chances of running on the park and scoring. These clowns are broadcasting to the UK, not just England but even if they were just beamed into English homes, their comments and attitude stank. They showed a disgaceful lack of professionalism and respect for Andorra.

Good job they didn't see the Faroese 'keeper

Dont be harsh, after all he did serve part of his football education at Firhill.

That gets right on my tits aswell. Fukin hate the English media.

I actually think they are entertaining (apart from ex Celt Ian Wright who I gladly would do time for).

These c***s are the reason most Scots, Irish (North and South) and the Welsh wish the England team the very worst in every tournament. That fanny that advertises crisps is the new Motson. In fact he may be worse than Motson. Still at least they did a bit when they pulled their coutries jersey on unlike that b*****d Charlie Nicholas who did f**k all yet still feels he has licence to slag f**k out of our current squad

Lawrenson said something like:"It's like playing against The Channel Islands!" and then had a wee snigger in that whiny nasal effeminate voice of his.

Such disrespect for the opposition shows disrespect for oneself.

In this respect at least Davie Provan was courteous to The Faroes and reminded everyone that despite the world rankings you still have to get the result.

Chill out you little frustrated ratbag.

If you don't want to listen to them don't watch it or turn the sound down.

I dont think that's fair. If the English media tried to pass off a beating of Andorra as a credible result they'd be panned for talking their average side up again.

Whilst FIFA/UEFA force countries like England or even Scotland to play against primary school teachers and road sweepers, we are going to have to suffer through these mismatches.

The commentators were just calling it like it is. It's hard to respect opponents that are so completely out of their class.

Have to agree with that. No doubt many Scotland fans felt the same about our game on Saturday as Linekar et al though about England v Andorra, they were just giving an honest assessment of the game. It might seem disrespectful, but thats how it is.

I was embarrased for them when I heard the shite they were talking. Teams like England (and Scotland) should be spanking teams like Andorra (and the Faroes) especially at home. By all means be pleased that your team puts in a proffesional performance and scores a few goals but gloating and bragging just make them look like <unts of the absolute highest order and everyone watching will know that.

Oh no, you can't say that. It's racist

Why do people say that the ONLY reason they don't support england is the media. BULLSH**E its england were taken aboot here, I don't care if the pundits are lovely well mannered respectful angels who love everyone and sell their own house to give money to the poof of the world, I would never support england for the sole reason that we have had a wee bit of history with them, some including our ansestors getting slaughtered. I could't care less about the commentry just want those scummy bastarts to loose

The Vikings raped and pillaged us as well.

Do you hate Swedes and Norwegians?

It was my ancestors that did the raping and pillaging, get it right up ye

I think England v Macedonia should be interesting. Last time they played in Skopje, they had a hard-fought result that included local genius Artim Sakiri threatening to kill David Beckham Let's hope Sakiri fancies his chances from a corner again, what a strike that was.

The English media used to wind me up something bad.

But gradually ive come to find them amusing.
They build themselves up over the years to the big tournaments and set themselves up for a huge fall.
It never fails. Absolutely priceless.

I laughed so hard at Ian Wright having to hold back the tears at their World Cup that I almost passed out!

I have no problem with English people or the England team. They hav some fantastic players who can be a joy to watch (although they were boring during teh WC), but the media is the reason I love to watch them fail.

Its becoming my hobby. I love to see Wright and the rest of them getting all excited and then trooping of home after being "cheated" out of yet another major trophy!

It just doesnt get tiring!

Woops!

Each to their own newcomer. I have lived and worked in England. Made plenty of friends there and had good banter about the football. Maybe that's just a grown up attitute I have, who knows?

Perhaps if it was fantasy football or they think it's all over but this was supposed to be a "quality" professional production. Four schoolboys belittling a national team and giggling about it was quite tasteless to me. I wasn't questioning the ridiculous necessity for these games, just the lack of "class" that these guys showed.

what im more disturbed about is this new clamour by journalists that these wee teams are so laughable that their countries should not have to inconvenience themselves by playing them(though to be fair i reckon Liechtensteins 2-2 draw with Portugal during the last WC qualifiers was damned inconvenient for the portugese).
Any introduction of pre-qualifying is "thin end of the wedge" time

Maybe its just me, but I hate all that po faced Craig Brown-esque "there are no easy games in world football" nonsense and the immortal "we respect all our opponents equally" line.

Even playing at pub football level, there were some weeks when you knew you were playing against diddies you would take 10 off and other weeks when you knew you weer in for a hiding.

I think the 4 of them talk utter nonsense in general, and have little or no idea of England's true standing in World football, but I would have found it laughable had they done the serious respect sketch when dealing with one of the 3 or 4 worst teams in Europe.

Completely agree.

Saying Andorra is rubbish is fair enough, but the way it was done was getting on my tits.

Mark Lawrenson actually sounded genuinely disgusted that they'd had the audacity to even turn up, and was mocking them for being useless throughout. I mean FFS, the country's got a population of 70,000, it's not like a 5-0 defeat to England is an underperformance.

I also thought it was total bollocks to go on about Andorra getting nothing out of it - if I was an average football player who was lucky enough to qualify for a small country, you can bet your arse I'd be telling my grandchildren and anyone else who'd listen about my games at Old Trafford and the San Siro etc for years to come.

The idea of pre-qualifying, meanwhile, is totally flawed due to the problem of where you draw the line.

Population wise, the only true minnows are Andorra, Luxumbourg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Malta, Iceland, the Faroes and Montenegro (who'll presumably have a team next time round). That's eight teams - if they played a pre-qualifying tournament and, say, eliminated a grand total of six teams then what would be the point? There'd still be some groups of different sizes and some with diddy teams in. All it would do would serve to make some teams play more than others, and arbitrarily let some pish teams have a run out, whilst ruining the big day of others, who would then get hardly any competative international football at all.

If you extended the pre-qualifying to include more, the problems get even worse. Where do you draw the line and decide who has to pre-qualify or not? Everyone knows the FIFA rankings are a shambles, and it could hardly be done on population or the strength of the domestic scene, since even minnows like Latvia and Slovenia with less than 3 million people and terrible leagues have managed to qualify and perform respectably of late.

The final problem is that of the minnows taking their players for the pre-tournament. Barcelona are hardly going to be thrilled if Eidur Gudjohnsson has to have a month off from playing to hump Andora and the Faroes, are they? Most of these countries have at least a few full-time profesisonals, whose clubs would suffer unfairly if some of their players were stolen for such purposes.

Finally, I think the thing that really pisses me off about English pundits is the assumption that these teams will be gash, when in reality they don't have a clue what they're actually like. Chris Waddle today, for example, was trying to make the case for pre-qualifying, and came out with the gem that "maybe Andorra can improve quickly like Turkey, who we used to thrash but are now tough opponants," over-looking the small fact that Turkey has dozens of millions of people and Andorra's entire population couldn' fill Old Trafford. It's this type of ignorance that makes their attitude arrogance rather than justifiable confidence.

Yip scandavian fannies. Anyway We have been fighting with england for centuries, LITERALLY. That history will never go away, therefore we adapt a huge rivalry with them. Its fuckally to do wae wit some wee fanny says on the tele

LMAO!! ye i noticed that when i was reading it!! lolololol waw. the 'f' is next to the 'r' lol. And because of that my whole paragraph which I wrote has absolutely no effect other than laughing at the mistake lol. I won't even bother editing it just leave it in

Absolutely mate. I am not saying I hate every single english person alive today, of course I don't. It's when it comes to representing their country that the hatrid comes out. It is like my friend who is a celtic fan supports celtic and absolutely hates rangers, but has a rangers friend aswell. They can still like each other but when it comes to representing the country or team, that the rivarly and hatrid comes out

This isn't just an English problem. We had our very own silly fuckers spouting the same pre-qualifying line in the shape of Donnelly, Nevin and Smith on Saturday.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good old anti-English diatribe though

Willie Miller and Billy Dodds were even worse on Radio Scotland. Miller must have made jibes about the Faroese fitness, or lack thereof, at least once every 10 minutes.

What were they saying TM, I did not hear them as we had family round and the sound was down. Was it as bad as what I heard from their counterparts though? Was Nevin saying that boyd and miller should expect double hat-tricks, that the midfield should expec a couple of goals and that Craig Gordon should fancy himself to get on the scoresheet? Did Dougie say that he could probably knock a couple in against the faroese defence?
Anyway, it was an anti-pundit diatribe, where did I mention it being "the English" who showed a lack of respect?

Ian Payne (I really hate the smug, condescending p***k) on Sky Sports News half an hour before the game was the one that really annoyed me.

On seeing pictures coming in from Celtic Park: "Oh, and it doesn't look like it's going to sell out." It was so patronising, and this was with the knowledge that we had shifted about 50,000.

I don't know about everyone else, but 50k for a game vs the Faroes seems pretty decent to me, especially when you consider a country ten times the size of Scotland could only pull in an extra 6000 for a match against a similar nation...