If It's Wednesday, This Must Be Croatia

And it must be time for me to have a rant about these stupid internationals wasting a perfectly good October weekend. I'll tell you what England's problem is, if you like. Their best player, Rooney, has become as selfish as the rest of them. They are such fucking prima donnas. Where's Tony Adams ? Where's Terry Butcher ? Where's Bryan Robson ? Who's going to play through the pain barrier ? Who's going to say "Blood ? Never mind, patch me up and send me back on". None of them. Listen to Gerrard today, moaning about being booked. Listen to Lampard, if you can hold back the bile, talking about sitting on the plane home from Germany thinking all about how he didn't score. They are coddled, they are surrounded by agents telling them take this deal, take that deal, write the book, I know the extra money makes no difference to you but I'm on five per cent here.

Anyone who thought things were going to change with McLaren was kidding himself. McLaren did all the coaching under Ericsson. If anyone was telling them "When you go one up, drop back to your own penalty area and invite constant pressure by giving the ball away" it was him. Everyone goes on about who should be the 23rd man in the squad and who should be third choice on the left wing as if it was the key issue. It's not. The key issue is that throughout the core of that team, there are selfish tarts instead of leaders, with the possible exception of Terry. Look, just scrape a point off Croatia and fuck off so we can get back to some proper football. And I'll tell you who else can fuck off as well, everyone on TV and in the media who talk about Macedonia as if they're Blyth fucking Spartans in the FA Cup when any fule kan see that they are skilful, organised and most of all committed enough to put the likes of England to shame.