England 1 USA 1

So another World Cup campaign has begun in earnest for England, another chance for people’s brains to be more confused on our chances to win the World Cup than a Man Utd fan’s view on Dimitar Berbatov. The arguments whether we can or not go back and forth like a grunting session does in a ladies match at Wimbledon. From this match tonight we have seen Green have a blonde moment, the Heskey debate carry on like a Madonna adopting spree and Carragher being exposed for having no pace as he was shown up by the useless pudding that is Hull City reject Jose Altidore. And finally this was another chance for the fair-weather fan, glory hunters, football hating wives and girlfriends showing their blind ignorance towards the USA team. Quotes like “they don’t even know how to say football right” or “it’s not even their 3^rd most important sport. Well they beat Spain who we lost to, they were two goals up against Brazil who we lost to as well, so this result tonight isn’t anything to be ashamed of at all.

The game itself started off like a Richard Hammond test drive, extremely high tempo. Gerrard and Lampard began to work fantastically well, Lennon frightened their full-backs and the excellent Heskey opened up their central defence to provide a stupendous weighted pass to Gerrard who magnificently finished off the move to send the England fans (including me) in raptures. After this for me it went stale. Heskey was magnificent all game regardless of the others around him, Rooney was average as he dropped off too much and Lampard left a lot to be desired as he failed to produce much with the ball and failed to receive the ball as he was shadowed out of the game by Gerrard. On Heskey, he consistently won the headers, consistently worked hard and consistently laid the ball off to Rooney and Gerrard to score the 4^th minute goal. He is the only striker in the squad who brings the full potential out of Rooney. Crouch and Defoe are just club players, end of. Heskey performs the same role each game, but does it effectively. Yes he is one dimensional but that dimension is the one needed to unlock the world’s best defences.

Robert Green, poor old Robert Green. He isn’t required to do anything strenuous for the 40 minutes pre-ceding the goal but when he does despite it wasn’t strenuous, he lets it slip through his east end paws, poor bastard. It’s the same story with all Goalkeepers. Their job isn’t like a Centre Forward or Midfielder where if you make a hash of a shot, the game is over, because they have a chance to redeem themselves. Not if your Peter Crouch though. Goalkeepers like Green don’t have the chance to claw that ball from behind the line and start all over again like nothing happened. You just have to move on and Green did with consummate style with making a save from the great man Altidore himself. Green should remain as our keeper for the next game. If Capello dropped Green, that’s his England career dead, just like Scott Carson’s was after the Croatia game. We must as a nation show faith, not blind faith, but faith in a Goalkeeper who without question has the ability to marshal the back four in a World Cup winning side. Part of that back four tonight, yet only as a substitute was Jamie Carragher.

Carragher, love him or hate him is honest. He revealed in his autobiography that he’d prefer to win with Liverpool rather than England. And this was backed up by his decision to retire from international football when Steve Mclaren didn’t play him. Now the view expressed in his autobiography may be seen as unpatriotic but I see it as fair. He plays week in and week out for Liverpool being backed by the mostly passionate support every week at Anfield, and Liverpool pay his wages. He didn’t say he didn’t care about England, he said that he wanted to win with Liverpool more than England as he has a bigger affiliation and local support from the Scousers in the Kop than he did from plastic Man Utd fans from Romford calling themselves England fans when they were really there for the god-for-saken `nice day out`. Them type of people shouldn’t be allowed with a 40 mile radius of a football ground as they pollute the true, working class, sing your heart out fans and not the above mentioned. I digress. Bringing this back to on the pitch matters, it should be Michael Dawson with John Terry on Friday night against Algeria, as Ledley King was ruled out for that game immediately by Capello after this match tonight. Carragher got exposed for having no pace which therefore means any Algeria player under the age of 25 will be able to skin him up more than a Chicken does in an intensive farm. Bring in Dawson, and you eradicate this problem, Terry and Dawson will complement each other well. As tonight even when King was playing we looked exposed at the back, especially from set plays. This was exposed most notably when Boconegra and Oneweu’s free headers from two separate corners went sailing over the bar. With a prolific header of the ball, America could have got more than just a point out of this game. However we are England, we should be internally optimistic. If Capello analyses the game correctly then he will see where the flaws are and the positives are. The flaws are Terry and King don’t work well at the back, Carragher has lost it, Milner was prematurely ejected from the game due to silly challenges, Lampard and Gerrard together in the midfield doesn’t work, it never has done and never will and Wright-Phillips was ineffective throughout. The positives are as follows; Ashley Cole is the best Left-Back in the world and would walk into any side in the World, Glen Johnson was excellent despite being lacklustre defensively, Lennon was good despite some poor service to the strikers and Rooney and Heskey is a partnership that does work. Just like Clegg and Cameron, however in the near future they will both have to learn two very different types of extensive ball control as the Labour leadership contest nears its conclusion. Also if Rooney pulls his weight within that partnership their partnership could potentially be formidable.

We as a nation trust Capello, we trust him to make the correct decisions regardless of what public opinion dictates him to do. If that would be the case, Heskey wouldn’t have needed to open the zip on his suitcase left I’m sure on the top of his wardrobe. We further trust Capello in assembling a side to defeat Algeria and any one to that matter, apart from the USA of course. We finally hope of course that the players, coaches, backroom staff and the fans most importantly have a whale of a time for the continuation of the tournament in South Africa.