DEAR ENGLAND Every two years, it's the same. An men's international football tournament kicks off. If a Celtic nation qualifies, they hope to make it beyond the first stage of the tournament and everything from there is a bonus. If England qualifies, well... England expects. Nothing but the last four will do and if England doesn't make it, the manager and the squad gets slaughtered by football pundits, tabloid writers and by some supporters on radio phone-ins and social media. When the World Cup kicks off in Mexico City this Thursday, expect pundits like Gary Neville, Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton to wax lyrical about the attacking threat of the England team but also fret about whether their defence is strong enough. Expect Scotland fans and their pundits to simply hope their national squad can somehow manage make it through the initial group phase. The pressure on Thomas Tuchel's England team will be immense and if they put in some mediocre performances a...
THE CAGE Is there any actor working onscreen these days with sadder eyes than Michael Socha's? The ' This is England ' and ' Toxic Town ' actor is brilliantly deployed as a down on his luck, casino employee in Tony Schumacher's latest Liverpudlian drama 'The Cage' and he squeezes every bit of sympathy from us as his character walks into one disastrous decision after another. Socha's Matty is a decent soul with some kind of magnetic pull towards trouble - a drug addict with a gambling addiction who is stealing from his employer who also happens to have links to organised crime. The thing is Matty's not the only employee who's robbing the casino. Sheridan Smith's struggling mother of two, Leanne is doing it too as she tries to keep her family together. And when she realises Matty's thieving too, they become co-conspirators. The problem, though, is Barry Sloane's thug Gary is laundering drugs money through the casino and is lookin...