1) There is an England Cricketer in the side somewhere, causing ying/yang instability and a lower order collapse
OR
2) Englands 1st XI just aren’t used to playing with each other for 90 minutes, In all of the friendlies where they should be learning how to play together, they spend 45 minutes together, and then all get subbed for the 2nd half, leading to the situation where the players don’t know what they are supposed to actually be doing in the 2nd half, because they haven’t found themselves in that situation before.

Also, they should have brought Trevor Sinclaire. You need a player called Trevor in a side.

– Shame about Owen

– The two Coles linked up well first half, but some of that was down to how Sweden played. It was obvious that Sweden would shore up their right side in the second half, but Eriksson didn’t seem to predict that this would happen. When J Cole, our main threat, was nullified because of double teaming, he should have been moved out to the right.

– David Beckham. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. Utterly one-dimensional, off the pace and his loss of mobility is worrying. Our most ineffective midfielder. He now seems capable of delivering passes (90 per cent of them showboat long balls) in only a stationary position. Also poor defensively at the corners. Get rid, immediately.

– Owen Hargeaves. Very good I thought. Not your normal holding player who just sits there and passes left to right – bags of energy, quick to recover positions and half decent passing.

– Why did we panic when Sweden equalised? We needed Beckham to calm things down, tell the team to keep the ball for 10 minutes to take the sting out of the situation and build again.

– Rooney was decent, and was a threat. The passing was better, had more variety and was more incisive in the first half, but it was a worrying performance in the second half.

Hargreaves was a nice surprise and I think a mark of 5 for Rooney is a little conservative; really played well in the first half and was hardly to blame for the midfield fallout in the second.

I think Sven ballsed by maybe not giving Lennon a go up front before the knockout stages instead of putting Crouch on…fair enough if it had backfired then stick Mr 5 minutes of a game doing something worthwhile on in his place, but now we have but one pairing tried before the last 16. Also we should note that the 3-0 reverse to Germany means less than nowt as Ecuador rested all of their key players, and played without the urgency of the first 2 games, which seeing the mediocrity on offer from the Swedes and us last night makes perfect sense as it doesn’t matter who they face.

With supposedly a massive stock of central defenders that are the envy of all other nations, the inability to deal with repeated lumps into the box is also a major worry, especially seeing how Ecuador played against (ok ok weak) Costa Rica…who they also attacked with pace down the flanks. It isn’t going to be easy this one, and I don’t think a defeat would actually constitute a shock as it doubtless would have done before the Gold Cup started.

But still, the Golden generation’ll come good. Pity we only have 2 strikers in the country in this era who are worthy of playing and fit. Safe.