McClaren had almost a third-choice back four out there, plus a second-choice front two. But I knew he’d go 4-5-1!

I knew Lamps’d be back in. I knew the players, Englishmen with all the flexibility of polystyrene, would snap under the pressure of a new formation!

You know what? I withdraw comments about too many foreigners in the Premier League. There’s just too few Englishmen in Serie A and La Liga.

Becks, unfit, ponderous and playing Mickey Mouse footie in the most artificial place on God’s green earth, was the only bloke to deliver a geunine pass in the whole game (Croats aside).

I’m not going to batter Carson. Robinson should have been replaced games ago, then the lad wouldn’t have had to be given a Bonetti of a job to do on Wednesday night. As for Peter Crouch, well by gum, lad, you’re the first name in the next squad.

At half-time I felt, well, relieved. The wife’s head is on me shoulder and she’s saying: “So, can we go somewhere warm for our summer holidays now, then?”

And I’m saying: “I still want to watch all the games, pet.” And she’s saying: “I know, but you won’t mind those funny foreign commentators if there’s no Brits involved.”

And suddenly I’m free! Free from the tyranny of supporting a bunch of pampered, overpaid plonkers who couldn’t successfully make a pass at a speed-dating session for 40-year old virgins.

But then comes the comeback, dammit. And we’re back believing again, until the lad Petric, closely marked by the Ghosts of England Past but left alone by the clueless pillocks on the pitch, finishes it once and for all…

We’re off to Crete, apparently.

‘FA’ just about sums up what these blokes know about footballDerek ‘Robbo’ Robson
But before I scare the infant population of Teesside by throwing toys out of every pram in Middlesbrough, let’s just take a deep breath and count to ten… four, four, two.

Cos you know what, I don’t really want to talk about the game. I want to talk about the academy of asses who arranged an extraordinary meeting on Thursday morning.

Extraordinary is right. It’s extraordinary how these blokes think they should still be in a position to sack someone else. If McClaren can be fired (from a cannon, preferably) for putting the wrong personnel in the wrong places, then how come Barwick’s still got his ample backside wedged into a swivel-chair?

‘FA’ just about sums up what these blokes know about football. The 2006 World Cup effort was dismal, so you select a bloke who was intimately associated with it to carry on.

He’s a pleasant, feeble coach and Barwick says he was always his number one. Right, Bri, that’ll explain why you were shuffling around Portugal after Big Phil like some spotty teenager after a holiday romance.

But it’s worse than that, isn’t it? Wembley stadium was a pretty good allegory for the FA. A sodden mudbath of self-interest, ploughed up by money-spinning and downright bloody pointless flirtations with American football.

To still see gridiron markings on the surface of our national game just indicates how important football is next to the cash-wallpapered offices of the FA. The friendly versus Austria, too. Why? Ridiculous.

The arrogance of these people beggars belief. McClaren has said he takes responsibility for the failure (yeah and 2.5 million quid! Do we have to make failure such an attractive option?)

And so the search begins for a successor and we’ve got the same people looking. The people who missed O’Neill and hacked off Scolari, and who haplessly played ringmaster to a disastrous media circus.

A new manager’ll be harder to find than Steve Harmison’s boots. Mourinho’s your man and maybe he’s perverse enough to take it on.

But enough of the (g)olden generation. There are young players who, given time, a good coach, and the permission of an absurdly deluded press pack, might be the future of the national team.

Agbonlahor, Walcott, Young, Richards, Foster… If we don’t get to the finals in South Africa, so bloody what? Give ‘em a chance.