Percy - Wednesday, July 12
Still depressed

Sorry for not having come on here with anything to say for so long but, basically, I've been depressed.

It always takes me a bit of time to get over being knocked out of the World Cup but this time was worse than ever. When your expectations are high then it is harder to get over disappointment.

The English get stick for having unrealistic expectations about their football team but I think they were justified on this occasion. After all, Italy ended up winning the thing and I don't believe that they are any better than us.

This competition was definitely there for the winning and we went and played like morons. It's very hard to take.

Sure we had some bad luck. Owen wasn't fit, Rooney wasn't fit, Bobby Charlton retired 30 odd years ago. But basically we were still in a position to give it a go.

That's what pisses me off. We didn't give it a go. Under Eriksson we never have.

I don't demand success. I am sensible enough to realise that only one team can win and there are plenty of other nations out there who are capable of knocking England out at any time.

The thing that matters to me is that if you do get knocked out you do it in the right way. Under Eriksson all we have ever tried to do is nick a goal and hold on. For all his talk we never once went on the field against a decent side and had the attitude that we would win because we were better than them. It was always try and nick a goal and then hold on for dear life.

What a load of bollocks. Every player who has played under Eriksson at a major tournament will end up looking back and wondering why they let such huge opportunities slip away with barely a whimper. They will wonder why they were so cautious rather than just grasping the nettle and giving it a real go.

They will live with regrets.

This side was undoubtedly his best even with its' problems up front. Of course the manager did nothing to help that situation by taking no credible back up to his injured pair whatsoever.

Even then we could have made an impression but the team continued to play with caution and fear. The suggestion was that Gerrard and Lampard would be freed to support Rooney when he was sent to play the lone forward role but that never really happened.

You can argue that that might be the fault of the players rather than the manager but the evidence of what happened after Rooney was sent off against Portugal suggests otherwise.

Down to ten men it becomes less about tactics and more about spirit, energy and desire. The players showed those qualities in adversity. If they had been allowed to show these qualities when it was still eleven against eleven surely we would have won the game.

As it was Hargreaves was kept on a leash just in front of the back four with our two attacking midfield payers not far in front of him and we spent the first hour worrying about some mystical threat from Portugal.

They had the worst centre forward in the tournament and they left him just as isolated as we left Rooney. What were we worried about?

So another chance has passed us by and this was a real one. These things only come around every four years and it's a long time to wait to watch such gutless surrender.

Let's just hope Steve MacLaren has more about him than Sven and, with all the foreign imports flooding our game, that he still has eleven players to pick from in four years time.