Naive England hiding behind Rooney petulance

Tell me I’m not the only person that can see through this.

If you read this morning’s papers without having watched last night’s England game, you’d think that Wayne Rooney was solely to blame for the failure to win in Podgorica. Rooney’s undeniably a fool, but we already knew that – and we’ve accepted that as a facet of his game. How many times have you heard commentator or pundit tell you that you ‘just can’t take that (aggression) out of his game?

The press just love to scapegoat don’t they – whatever stops them having to acknowledge that this England team, this generation of England players, just isn’t good enough. The press coverage after the last World Cup is a great example, because that implied that had it not been for Fabio Capello our team of world beaters would have put the rest of the world back in their inferior footballing places. Rubbish, wake up – England don’t fail because of injuries, because of Italian’s on large salaries, or because of referees, we lose because the eleven best players in the country can’t retain possession of the ball.

We play attacking and direct football, because that’s what works in the Premier League – but it’s not conducive to winning on the world stage. So very few of our players play outside of England that any other brand of football is alien – keeping possession? Patience? Craft? ‘Bollocks – let’s get in their face’.

Yeah? How’s that working then?

Our failure to make an impact globally is borne out of an arrogance embedded in our football – we don’t have to adapt, we’re England, we invented the f**king game.

Right, that’s fine, but a team that was comfortable on the ball, and one that had a nous that our side lacks, would have had no problem seeing out the remaining minutes against Montenegro last night. We will never, ever learn, and the press over-emphasising secondary issues helps us to live in that ignorance.