Yes, that is the very valid approach that the winner is always the best team.

Winning a tournament isn't about being the best at passing / crossing / making runs / making nice triangles. It's about being the best at winning crucial games. If we win on Sunday we will by default have been the best at winning the games that matter while Spain / Germany etc were too busy finding players to pass to.

We have a chance of winning but unless you believe that the best team win by definition, I doubt we'll be the best team in the tournament. We've been lucky, even someone as good as Bellingham has a more than 50% chance of screwing up a bicycle kick. It is arguable that the best four teams were in the other half of the draw as well. But we are in the final and we could win it. So congratulations to Southgate and the squad.

Last time we had a 6ft 5 inch goalkeeper he dived like a fallen tree,let's hope Ward is a bit more agile

KT2 you're forgetting one of the key rules of being a football fan. Any defeat or poor performance is the manager's fault (he tells them to play badly). Any win is despite the manager not because of them (when it goes well it's because the players chose to ignore the manager, which they never do when they lose).

And we are the Crawley of this Euros tournament... Started turdey, continued turdey, then came good just at the right time.

Got to give Southgate credit for last night. A tactical joust between managers. Southgate set up well, an excellent first half performance. Koeman countered that very effectively in the second half. Southgate held his nerve then delivered an assist and winning goal with his subs.

As Kentish said we've had worse starting keepers than Ward, he's going to be able to slot in as/when needed and back up keepers don't play that often.

We shall see how Ward does when he actually plays, as a keeper there is nowhere to hide and it will become obvious pretty fast if he is good or not, but, as a signing, he seems consistent with the general feeling so far that our budget is down in relative terms, so we are having to scrabble around more at the cheaper end of the market and hope for the best

And worth saying Bass' 40 games that weren't non league were 18 in L1 across 3 seasons and 22 in L2 across 2 seasons. And he hadn't played a minute between May 2022 and joining us in July 2024. People seemed to think he did ok.

We’ve had some real shitters as reserve keepers. Ward sounds like he could step up without automatically handing the oppo three points.

The internet is an amazing thing sometimes, the stuff you can find out if you look for it is pretty useful.

Same quality as most keepers at L2. Roos came to us with very little games, mid 20s and had just had a piss poor loan in L2. Did OK. Ramsdale came to us with 19 L2 games and a non league game. And his L2 loan didn't go that well. Bass came to us with 84 league games to his name (and actually half of those were non league and not even that high non league). All of them did OK.

Looking at his time at Sutton out of the 22 games while he was there. He played 9 and was on the bench for 10. (2 of the 3 he didn't play and 1 of the subs were the first 3 league games when he joined he club). He left SwinDon because he got pushed down the order, then left Sutton in January and went back to training wtih SwinDon (by mutual consent). So he was in the Sutton squad when he was there and got his contract ended to move back to where he'd been living. (Always bit more to these things than someone is shite).

Lurker - possibly less about the number and more about the quality of the level those games were played at.

Karma's a bitch sometimes ain't it

140 games for a 27 year old keeper isn't that bad. Long had not massively more than that at the age of 27 and Roos had less than 100 at the age of 27. Both of them would still do a good job for us today. Luke McGee who is another good keeper for this or L1 level had not much more than that at 27. Worth remembering keepers aren't outfield players where you can play 100 games really quickly from lots of 10-15 min sub appearances.

Surrey Bob might be right? Ward got kept out of the Sutton squad by a reserve player and a keeper who couldn’t catch COVID so hoping he’s going to be number 2

Congratulations to England and Southgate. I've absolutely hated the shite they have served up - until last night. Shame they have to face a very, very good Spanish squad in the final. Another so close .........

Lewis Ward - does he know how to play football or even keep goal? Just how do you reach the age of 27 and play only 140 games for some really shit clubs and get to be considered good enough for a one year contract? God I hope there is a better keeper coming in as No.1.

Names on the trophy 🏆..some managers get all the luck.😀

*makes not names

Trigger - good luck for Saturday and all the best on your big day. I hope that the new Mrs Fish names a honest man of you. 🐟 + 🐠= ....... more little fishes.

It's brilliant that we've made it to the final, but how the fuck we have made it there after probably being one of the worst and most boring teams in the tournament i haven't got a clue. Having just about scraping through a very poor group and then just about getting past Slovakia, I was sure we would lose to a very good Swiss team, but after that I thought that maybe our name could be on the trophy. Tonight we finally put in a decent performance and actually deserved to win. I am not counting my chickens just yet, but you never know, seeing as we've been very lucky so far.

Not pretty to watch at times* but we're grinding out the results. Luck is on our side so who knows what will happen on Sunday?