Losers

I hate pundits. Gary Linker and friends were whining about England's performance. This is Gary "we play possession football in Spain, England should play possession" Lineker. The same Gary Lineker that spent the entirety of his time on-screen for slagging England for playing at possession game. Possession is negative. Possession is boring.

This was an England performance. What we wanted to see (well what I wanted to see anyway). Rooney was isolated and frustrated, true. But Hargreaves (man of the match) shielded the back four very well. Scolari's tactic was to try and make England hoof the ball (note the three midfielders sat between our midfield and defence) - well, it didn't work. We passed the ball and kept it. They had more chances but there was never anything serious in it. Then Rooney's frustration boiled over and he got his card, not for the stamp, but for shoving Nuno Knobhead (who looked like his aim in the game was to wind Wayne up).

Scolari seemed to get it all wrong once Rooney was off. No centre forward. No real desire to attack. They appeared complacent. Whereas England looked dangerous. Lennon terrified them. Crouch did a fantastic job holding the ball up. Unlike two years ago we played high up the pitch (there were occasions when we were pegged back but nowhere near like last time). We should have won in the ninety minutes. We should have won in the one hundred and twenty minutes. And then fat Frank screwed it up. As did Gerrard (the one player we could rely on). And then the bizarre recall of Carragher's penalty - he was bound to miss after that.

And it's all over. Again.

Goodbye Sven. Hello Steve.

So much for the golden generation.

PS: Fair play to the people with the flag by the right hand corner flag for getting the word 'Minge' onto national prime-time TV.