Looking forward to tonight's match without him.

Rooney as a teenager for Everton and England was fantastic.... until he broke his foot.

Over the years his attitude has worsened and moving to manure has tainted my opinion of him and I can barely watch him play now.

We should be able to beat anyone in our group with or without Rooney.

Southgate is showing some balls already!

The problem is that because the premiership is a "results now" business, clubs in it do not have the time they once did to nurture home grown talent, success stories like Wilf, Townsend and punch are very few and far between these days.

Just have a look around at the Premiership and take a look at the Foreign imports that account for 80-90 percent of most sides, and it's not unheard of for teams to play in the English Prem, without a single English player on the park.

IMO opinion the foreign players are just better, and I think hold up a large number of teams and certainly carry some of their English team mates, proof of the pudding being when you put the English ones together they are embarrassingly sh1t without johnny foreigner to make them look good.

Until we change that mentality we will never progress as a national side. I think we'd be better off going to the championship and picking from there, at least the teams in there have by and large a much higher concentration of English players.

Lastly the FA needs bringing down and building again with Football people in key positions. The fact we had an accountant in charge of finding Woy speaks volumes.

"It's not the bullet that's got my name on it that concerns me; it's all them other ones flyin' around marked 'To Whom It May Concern.'"

Not really sure why Southgate is getting all the plaudits for dropping Rooney. When Hodgson did it just a few months ago he was castigated.

Southgate has just pandered to the public, just a few days after saying how integral and important Rooney was and how well he played.

I might disagree with him, but he hasn't shown any balls.

"It's almost like a moral decision. Except not really cos noone is going to find out," Jez, Peep Show

Did Rooney play in Woy's last game in charge against Iceland?

Southgate was hardly going to say anything derogatory about any of our players after a game let alone the captain who had just received a special cap.

As for showing balls, well we'll have to disagree on that one. I think he was railroaded into playing Rooney v Malta for the reasons Stuk has outlined above. Clearly you disagree... I can live with that.

Agreed - it's now a majority-held opinion that Rooney should be dropped, so how does it show balls to drop him?

Whatever you think of Rooney, the ballsy thing to do now, given public opinion of him at the moment, would be to keep him in the side.

Southgate is crowd-pleasing - he's one of the least ballsy blokes I've ever seen.

You seemed to suggest that playing in midfield and for an under-performing side were mitigating circumstances.

Is that not the case when playing in midfield for a truly awful team?

Barkley scored 8 and assisted 9, and Everton finished well below Man u. He doesn't start for his country and at present isn't even in the squad.

Optimistic as ever