I thoroughly enjoyed seeing England beat Croatia the other night, a top notch performance when needed, I read a lot of papers in the build up and heard all sorts of journalists sharpening their pencils waiting for England to lose, the likes of Brian Woolnough (Star) and Martin Samuels (The Times) you could tell were poised... now from what I can make out our players feel the pressure before each game, and it is this pressure that affects their performances, they know that if they put a foot wrong they will be destroyed by the press, take Frank Lampard up to Euro 2004 he took his club form into Internationals, then after a few less than impressive performances the press did what they always did, slaughtered the man, all of this stoked the fans up who for a while now have been booing Lampard when he wears the England shirt at Wembley, do these journalists really think the players do anything other than try their best? I thought the idea of a journalist was to report the facts.. I am not interested in Martin Samuel's opinions (and boy does this over inflated ego have one). Its high time these idiots got behind our national team, they usually do once we get through the group phase of a championship, then its all hail our conquering heroes... the same heroes they had been slaughtering, I recall in the build up and during the group stages of the World Cup in Italy how these people were running down the England side saying how bad they were, how they would go nowhere, but suddenly we were in the Quarter Finals and the same team they had been ripping to shreds were now world beaters and the hapless Bobby Robson was now a top class manager, Martin Samuels and Brian Woolnough were amongst those people. These people make a good living out of football, think they are experts when they are just like you and me but they can write a bit, instead of slaughtering our teams they should stick to reporting the facts, and avoid their own ego fueled opinions that have a detrimental effect on the players. England needs its players to play without fear, that will not happen with the media behaving the way they do, but of course they are too arrogant, too full of their own self importance to even consider that!
As for the game Wednesday night, it was awesome, but a word of warning, they will not play like that every game, that is not possible, there will be times when a result will be ground out, where games will be tight dour affairs with few chances, that is the nature of football, Man Utd and Chelsea (successful teams) know this, and so does Fabio Capello, his Real Madrid side did not win in a swashbuckling way, they were efficient and got the job done, that is what we are going to see from England in the future I think. And Theo Walcott is not going to score 3 goals every game, he is young and will be inconsistent for a while, but the talent is there....
Right thats me happy....I have had my say!