So England have been knocked out of the World Cup 2010. Surely there aren’t too many of us who are genuinely surprised? Yes this was supposed to be our World-Cup winning ‘golden generation’, and yes, that ball was so far over the line even the burk sporting sunglasses in the crowd could see it. But did we at any point look like we could, or deserve to, win the game? No, we really didn’t.

The Germans played us off the park at certain points and England never reached that expected level of form. What a lot of people are struggling to understand however, is the approach taken to the game (and the 3 previous group games) by England coach Fabio Capello.

During the qualifiers, England were outstanding, brushing teams aside with ease and playing the like potential world champions we all know they can be. So what exactly happened to make the team stop playing like that? Fabio Capello happened. He decided, for reasons really known only to him, to change the team that had looked to fantastic in the run-up to the tournament. Let’s take England vs. Croatia in the qualifying rounds for example, we hammered them and who were the best two players; Theo Walcott and Joe Cole. Capello left Walcott at home and gave Joe Cole around 20 minutes over two games, with him never starting.

I don’t understand which England he’s watching, but he should be getting himself tested for better prescription glasses, because whatever Mr. Capello is seeing, the rest of the country aren’t. For example, i’d like to know what Capello sees in Heskey; the striker who can’t score. He should be in the Wizard of Oz; the lion, tinman, scarecrow and the donkey. Capello argues he brings the best out of Wayne Rooney. Does he really? When was this? Rooney looked to be imitating David Blaine to me; 40 days in a box without doing anything interesting whatsoever.

Then there’s the formation. Everyone in the country was pleading with Capello to put Gerrard up with Rooney in our 4-5-1 formation. But it seems Fabio is in need of a good hearing aid as well as better glasses, because he consistently played 4-4-2 with Gerrard on the left.

Let’s have Stuart Pearce as England manager, we can’t get any worse and at least he’ll give us a bit of passion. Bring on the 2014 Fifa World Cup.

Despite being Scottish, i do find myself supporting England when it comes to the World Cup. But 2010 has already proved a difficult year, even for an arm’s-length England fan. The warm up matches before the World Cup saw a fairly lucky win over Mexico (who dominated the game for the most part), followed by a even luckier win against the Japanese.

England’s arrival in South Africa for the tournament itself didn’t quite go to plan either, with a pretty average display against the renowned footballing country that is USA. The man who suffered most, perhaps fairly, was goalkeeper Robert Green, failing to collect a mediocre attempt on goal and instead allowing it to trundle across the line for the USA to equalise.

It would be fair to say it was a calamitous mistake and will no doubt have upset the man himself. So if you were (or are) a member of Robert Green’s family, now might be a good time to get him an early Christmas present to cheer him up. If England are to move forward in the tournament with Robert Green in goal, then he will undoubtedly need the rest of his team to rally around him and give him some kind of confidence boost before the kick off against Algeria. Ideally we need to send the perfect Xmas gift for him, so perhaps a giant inflatable ball … you know, for training purposes. Not the one that Liverpool so love, but Wayne Rooney could fire it at him all day long and not even Green could drop that one, thus restoring a little confidence.

Maybe the gift should be a table football game, (maybe an unusual gift for him perhaps), complete with no goalkeepers, just to replicate how England fans felt against the USA. If we are even smarter, perhaps we can persuade the next referee that the Kickster Goal Pro 2000 goalposts are actually standard size, but then England didn’t seem all that clever at scoring unless the posts were placed in row Z.