England vs Italy

England started brightly I thought and there were a few moments of hope, but then we reverted to type; useless. Italy cannot claim to have played brilliantly but what they did, they did well enough. In fact if their shooting had been any more accurate, we would have been sunk under a deluge of goals.

So, to the ratings. For me, they go like this

Joe Hart - 7. Couldn't say he could have done better, but wasn't hugely tested.
Glen Johnson - 7. Worked hard I thought and proved useful, good team player.
John Terry - 3. Shouldn't be an England player of course, did a couple of moderately OK things, usually a nuisance to his own team.
Joleon Lescott - 5. Didn't really do anything wrong.
Ashley Cole - 5. Same as above.
James Milner - 4. England are probably two levels above his ability. A liability and takes up a place.
Steven Gerrard - 5. For most of the game you could have sworn he wasn't playing.
Scott Parker - 7. Reliable, possibly deserves a bit higher score, but there was nothing pivotal.
Ashley Young - 3. Awful. Was the invisible man for almost the entire game.
Wayne Rooney - 6. Much as I dislike the lad, he was without blame here. He tried hard but had no delivery, as is apparent in other scores. Deserved an 8 but for the lack of actual play.
Danny Wellbeck - 6. Strong, played well.

Theo Walcott continues to show the reasons he should start and Andy Carroll? Are we hoping for a lucky move by this lumbering fool? He turns round with the alacrity of a supertanker and seemed at times genuinely lost as to what to do (once when he actually had the ball).

The biggest problem with the England football team continues to be a lack of team spirit. I appreciate it must be hard to get past their immense ego's, but the Coach has to. They have to come to want to play for England and the only way I can see to do that is to change the way we talk about football.

The press and the pundits continually talk of 'excellent play' when describing absolute mediocrity. How did Rio Ferdinand ever get cited as a world class player? He seems to have a particular knack for being somewhere other than where an attack is coming in. He likes passing back to the keeper.

John Terry is a thug and plays aggressively to hide his waning talents (such as they were). He should not play for England. Only a Liverpool jury would not see that Gerrard is also not what he was. There are players being denied places so these 'names' can play.

Players should be told by the England 'Manager' when they are just not good enough and dropped when they don't play well enough. Only by publicly stating the situation as it is, rather than molly-coddling their personalities will we ever start to turn it around. England has some talent and as a nation we should be doing better, but the players have to want it enough.