After England's failure in the Everyone Got A Invite (Except Scotland) Championships the inevitable inquest into what went wrong began. Back and to the Left news believes that we scored less goals than the opposition and that's what went wrong. Then again we've never "bottled" it in a major tournament for our country so our opinion is invalid.
Back and to the Left news collected some of the best.
Ex Liverpool and England Captain Steven Gerrard said the team "repeated the same mistakes of the past". Much like he did when he captained a side gripped by fear to a brilliant first round exit in the 2014 world cup
BBC pundit and legendary Newcastle manager Alan Shearer weighed in with: "It was the worst performance by a England team" he'd seen. Worse than the Euro 2000 games he played in? Remember this is the same Alan Shearer who walked away from his teammates while captain of his country vowing never to play for it again.
Glorious penalty failure Chris Waddle said "the players just seemed not to care" which as a observation is bollocks in itself. It's like saying Chris's penalty in Italia 90 was missed on purpose by a man with a bet on Germany. Highly unlikely but about as likely as the current batch of England players not caring.
The quotes went on and one coming from generations of England stars who had flopped (or not even qualified for, we're looking at you classes of 94 and 2008) at various tournaments. Each one blaming something or other but never just admitting; maybe Iceland just played a bit better on the day.
One of the bookies favourites for the England job is perennial passion merchant Tim Sherwood. We caught him as he left his part time job in the local library and he said:
"I might not be the best man for the job but I am a man so that's important. I may not get us winning again or playing decent football and I might even call Ryan Mason back up into the team. But one thing I will do is get everyone singing the national anthem really loudly. Even if they don't know the words. THAT's what footballs all about"
We couldn't agree more.
As we now look to a future where the England manager will have likely belong picked by Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard (another two who's efforts drove England to countless success...oh wait) we can't help but think we're overlooking the main issue:
We regularly started with five Tottenham Hotspur players.
