I hope you're pleased with yourself Adrian Chiles.
Sure, £1million+ (allegedly) is quite a decent yearly salary for a rotund journo who occasionally sports questionable facial hair, especially when all he has to do to earn it is sit on a sofa and make small talk with Kevin Keegan.
But is any amount of money enough to work for ITV, an organisation so incompetent that they managed to play an advert at the exact moment England's brave Stevie G was slotting home the opening goal in last night's game with the USA? What price your journalistic - and broadcasting - integrity, eh Adrian? Chiles profusely apologised for the blunder during the half time break, but he might as well have been apologising for the existence of his employers, who should never be allowed to broadcast a sporting event again. Ever.
Anyway, England's 1-1 draw with America would have been painful viewing had been shown on BBC, CNN, or Al Jazeera. Not because we played particularly badly in my opinion, but because the result was so predictable. England never know what to do when they take the lead - we've seen it time and time again in tournaments over the last few years; they start faffing about, gifting the ball back to the opposition, or lumping it long in the direction of the big man up front, and before long disappointment ensues.
If the equaliser was predictable, the manner of it was less so. Nevertheless, I would stick with Green for the Algeria match, if for no other reason than neither of the replacements are a sure thing; Hart is completely untested, and James is over-the-hill and error-prone. Capello thought Green was the best option yesterday, and I would hope he has enough courage in his convictions not to change his mind after one (admitedly costly) gaffe.
After half time I thought we were much improved, and should have gone on to win the match. We kept the ball reasonably well against awkward opposition, and created plenty of chances. Heskey, Gerrard, and Johnson were the pick of the white-shirted bunch, and again I hope the manager sticks with Mr Em, who did a good job of linking play and was certainly more impressive for much of the game than Rooney.
It wasn't perfect by any means; Lampard was annonymous, the centre-backs look like a disaster waiting to happen, and the usually peerless Capello made two left sided errors, selecting Milner then SWP when Joe Cole should have joined the fray. But with two games against less capable opposition to come, England showed enough for me to remain confident we will top the group. What happens beyond that remains to be seen.
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