Howler sees England stutter to opening draw

So yet another World Cup campaign kicks off with an English anti climax.

It was always going to happen. We were up against a side who are definitely no mugs but for some reason all us fans expected an easy victory. In fairness, a draw is not the end of the world. The likelihood is that we will go and win the next two games and top the group. However it was the circumstances that made the final result last night all the harder to swallow.

I don’t even know where to start! Actually yes I do. Robert Green. The latest England goalkeeper to suffer a calamity of epic proportions is the man from Chertsey. The West Ham United goalkeeper won the race to start England’s opening game after a week of
guessing games in which all three of England’s men in green were tipped to start.



I have a bias towards Joe Hart due to my allegiance to Birmingham City, but facts are facts, he conceded less goals than the other two, kept more clean sheets and his team finished highest in the league by some stretch. I don’t accept the argument that he’s too young, he’s only a year younger than Rooney and he’s had a superb season. Even if you decide against Hart, the next choice is James, NOT Green, as he proved in spectacularly damaging fashion last night.

For those of you who inexplicably missed the game last night (shame on you), the three lions started brightly, taking the lead inside five minutes when a neat little through ball by Emile Heskey was tucked away by our scouse skipper Steven Gerrard. After that it seemed to go a bit flat with few chances being created, but England never looked in danger of conceding.



That was until Rob Green decided the opening game of the World Cup was the perfect time to whip out the Scott Carson impression he’s been working on in his hotel room. Clint Dempsey had a shot from 30 yards. To describe it as speculative would be giving him too much credit. It looked as if Green would calmly collect the shot and England could regroup. However he decided to make it harder for himself by using just the thumb of his right hand to save the shot. Inevitably the ball squirmed over his gloves and we could only watch as the hapless goalkeeper tried in vain to scoop the ball back and then press his face into the turf.

It’s a good job he didn’t look up at that point as he would have seen ten Englishmen with their heads in their hands, probably thinking: “even Emilie would have had that one”. I think what I enjoyed most was the slow motion replay of David Beckham’s reaction. It looked like when The Rock used to stare out his opponents in the WWF with a stonking People’s Eyebrow. I half expected Becks to run on and deliver the people’s elbow to our red faced goalie.



So we went into half-time dejected, with the score at 1-1. No problem we thought, just a blip, we’ll still win.

Well things got worse as Ledley King had to be substituted with an injury, replaced by Jamie Carragher who looked off the pace but did OK. King joined James Milner who somewhat embarrassingly was substituted after just half an hour after an ineffectual start, which gained him a yellow card. To be honest, Shaun Wright-Phillips played far better when he came on.

The second half seemed to drift by without much happening. None of our stars made much of an impact, with Rooney not really appearing until the last ten minutes. Frank Lampard was quiet, I imagine he had a pie on the go. John Terry looked a little bit shaky, although my sources tell me he was on edge after getting wind that one of the other players found out what he got up to on his recent late night at the office finishing a project with their missus.

Rob Green then clawed back some of the respect he’d lost with the error, by tipping Jozy Alitdore’s shot onto the post. Although I do still think he should have been able to make a more solid save on that and the post saved him from being burnt at the stake. I had to put my Robert Green effigy on the back burner for a moment.

Ultimately England whimpered in with a draw and after Slovenia’s win over Algeria, they lie second in the group. Watching the game this morning I have no worries about us taking six points from our remaining fixtures and then in the knock outs it’s a different ball game. Unfortunately still not one we’re very good at. Maybe if we changed it to Petanque? Nah, France would have our number on that one.

So young Robert will have to face facts that he’s not cut out for this level and Fabio will now have to make a big decision on who to start in the next game. Green seems like a strong fellow, but it’s never going to be easy to come back from a moment like that.



In all I think we played well enough to just about deserve a win, and probably would have had we not been undone by the rasping left foot of Clint Dempsey, but it did nothing to quell the worries that England fans have that our national heroes will let us down once again.

Throughout the World Cup I will be giving my bets of the day via my twitter page, so if you fancy a flutter then check it out! I’ll be putting a tenner on all the bets I suggest and so far it’s proving lucrative!