This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

Last night England crashed out of Euro 2012 and unsurprisingly the Worlds media began to say things that I’ve been saying all along, which leads me to believe that the British Press are still firing out propaganda to try and mask the terrible atrocities that were going on during the games.

Once again England failed to show any signs of support for one another, getting the ball but being surrounded by two or three Italian players and having no option but to either take all of them on or try to win a throw in. Neither worked the majority of the time. When England did have a throw, there were NO options. Not a single moving England body to create space or an option. Ashley Cole got himself booked in the Sweden game for “time wasting” on a throw in, when really, he just never had an outlet.

Passing was another giant mess, when England did have a spell of possession it quickly petered out because the passing from the players was so shocking. I think we made more successful passes to opponents than we did to our own people. Most of the time we had to resort to the long balls because of another issue, we sat far too deep.

I understand that we did need men behind the ball to stop threats, especially against France and Italy, but when you have ten men behind the ball and none of them squeezing up the pitch when we had the ball, it gave us no choice but to hoof it forward and maintain our position ready for the inevitable return.

I think Roy made the right choices in bringing on Carroll and Walcott early in the second half. Carroll worked tirelessly to get the ball down, to chase it around, but we didn’t have any options once he’d won that ball. Rooney was lacklustre and had run out of puff and Ashley Young had nowhere to go.

England looked most dangerous on the counter but relying on Rooney for pace was a mistake. Walcott was brought on, I thought, to help with that. He can sprint out of our half and run at the Italians, but for some reason nobody wanted to pass to him and they kept playing it down the left with Young despite Walcott being in acres of space on the right. I don’t think he had more than three touches in the hour he played.

Once again our fate came down to penalties, which most pundits had predicted. Once again, England were sent home. I’m sorry, but if you’re a footballer, you should be expected to score from the penalty spot. In Joe Hart everyone thought we had another Seaman but he wasn’t in the same league. Why send up Cole and Young? We had Carroll and Terry who were more likely goal-scorers. Carroll should have been third choice and if he’d scored that might have swayed the Italians a little more.

But it’s over. Roy has a LOT of work to do to improve the squad if they’re going to be anywhere near as good for the World Cup. We were good at the back, we had to be, but there was nothing more than that. No movement, no passing, no passion, once again leading to a disappointed nation.