McClaren's gone

See the BBC article. I feel very sorry for the guy, it has to be the most horrible job in the entire UK, to be England team manager, probably worse even than Prime Minister! But after last night's shockingly poor performance and 3-2 home defeat to Croatia, which ensured England didn't qualify even for the European Championships, never mind the World Cup, there was little doubt he had to go.

And the blame game begins. Sure, McClaren put out a team that should have been able to work much more effectively as a unit, and ensure England at least got the draw they needed. But what about the over-played over-hyped players on the field? What were they doing when it mattered?

What about the media? How our media completely clobbers any player the moment they show any sign of weakness. Poor Scott Carson, his error conceded the first goal, but his subsequent saves to keep the scoreline reasonable as England continued to be hopeless and aimless, will be forgotten in the tabloids today. England has a small number of good goalkeepers, and our media continues to hound each one of them out of the England jersey for small errors committed here and there. It's far too much to hope that instead of berating each of these young goalkeepers, the media might build them up a little.

And what about the FA? Incompetent enough to leak announcement of Scolari's immenent appointment way back when, the Brazilian then got a quick idea of the kind of media scrum he was likely to face, and got out quick. Any quick appointment that followed that would easily be seen as the second (at best) choice. Curbishley moaned and moaned about not being talked to, but if this is true, that's pretty shocking. Curbishley would surely still make a good manager, having achieved a great deal with what he had at Charlton. Martin O'Neill would also have made a great choice.

Furthermore, the FA has presided over the watering down of international football to a dangerous extent. Top players are conveniently "injured" when friendly internationals come about, and in fact friendly internationals are largely ignored. Yet this is a far cry from only a few years ago, when it was said English players did not know how to play "friendly". Less practice playing together, less time as the clubs demand their players back asap, and release them late, means an ill-prepared England team.

Yet everyone's pointing the finger at the wrong thing - it's the number of foreigners in the Premiership, of course! But I've ranted enough. Sadly it seems the thing that most needs to be realised is that England are a second rate nation that thinks too highly of itself in footballing terms. I'm sure they'll recover and qualify for the next few tournaments, but it would be good if a dose of realism was injected into us all...