AOB: England expects....too much

Lets be honest from the start – like the rest of the country I don’t especially care about England games except when we’re in the finals of a major tournament. I can’t even really get that excited about qualifiers, unless it’s a kind of win-or-bust final game shoot ala Greece ’01, Turkey ’05 etc.

But sadly I had nothing better to do last night, and tuned into the England – Germany friendly. With the result being of no consequence at all the annoying bits about watching England on the BBC came to the fore:

- Gary Lineker making lots of smug ‘there’s no such thing as a friendly between these two’ type comments
- John Motson (below) shrieking like a sheep-skinned banshee and shoe-horning in about a millions reference to ‘that glorious night in Munich’.

- Mark Lawrenson being Mark Lawrenson

To complete the masochistic experience I then listened to 6-0-6, which featured about a million cabbies from South London going on about how disgraceful England had been, egged on by Alan Green, who seems to have rediscovered his Northern Irish roots now they’ve won a couple of games. It was like stabbing myself in the heart then hanging myself for good measure.

I didn’t think the game itself was actually that bad, certainly not as bad as has been made out by the media, and herein lies the problem with England, or more accurately England fans. We expect far too much.

Few teams play brilliantly in friendlies, and even if they do I don’t think you can consider a non-competitive game an accurate barometer of their quality. England may have lost, but they created a few chances and would’ve drawn against a competent German side were it not for a goalkeeping error. There were also plusses in the shape of the performances of Richards, Joe Cole, and Wright-Phillips. Unfortunately this isn’t enough to please Derek from Romford.

I’m not saying here that England are world beaters, but simply that we haven’t become a terrible team on the strength of last nights match. The results over the last couple of years have shown us to be pretty average, and even if we had tonked Germany that wouldn’t have changed this fact. I’m not a huge Steve McClaren fan, but I do feel a little bit sorry for him when elements of our fan base and media will never be satisfied.

Oh well, I'm sure my patriotic feeling will have returned by next summer. How much is a flight to Zurich these days anyway?