Crunchie time

Roy Hodgson is backing his England side to finally beat someone that isn't San Marino or Moldova in this qualification phase.That, incidentally, is an actual statistic, eight matches played, 4 draws against Ukraine, Poland and Montenegro plus 4 wins against Moldova & San Marino. Another statistic is England sitting in 17th place in the World rankings, sandwiched between footballing powerhouses Chile and Bosnia & Herzogovina, below the USA, Greece and Switzerland. The most worrying fact is the inability of a team managed by Roy Hodgson to beat middling international outfits like Poland, whose one star individual is offset against the distinct averageness of everyone else involved in the squad, or a team like Montenegro, whose population is approximately 1% of the size of England's, and then there's the mighty Ukraine, whose players almost exclusively play in the Ukrainian first division, although almost none of them turn out for the best team in it, which is entirely composed of Brazilians.

Watching England play at the moment does bring it home how poor a decision it was not to hire Harry Redknapp as manager. A manager who would play vibrant, attacking football with Theo Walcott, Dan Sturridge, Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck, Jack Wilshere etc etc, was passed over for a manager whose footballing style is slightly less interesting than being circumcised against your will. What you get from Hodgson is a team as bland as his face, you get someone who will manage a team containing Lampard, Rooney and Wilshere like he's still managing Simon Davies and Bobby Zamora back at Craven Cottage. At least with Redknapp we'd lose in style. But heck, when Roy fails to steer England through these last two challenges maybe the current QPR boss would be willing to trade posts.  

On the question of Adnan Januzaj, Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshere has quite strong views, saying that if he went and played in Spain he wouldn't play for Spain, which of course he wouldn't because he already plays for England. Jack has said that the only people who should play for England are English people, but what Jack hasn't explained is what makes an English person an English person, what if someone is born in England but then moves abroad (like Simone Perotta, who played for Italy without Jack raising any objections)? What if someone is born abroad to English parents (like Michael Chopra), is raised speaking English and moves to live in England? What if someone is born in England but educated outside of England (like Ryan Shawcross)? Is Ryan Shawcross Welsh because he is eligible to play for Wales or because he went to school there? Or is he English because he self-identifies as English? When does an English person become an English person Jack? If I wasn't born here but held a passport and self-identified as English, would that make me English? I don't fucking know if it would, I'd have to go and ask the new Home Secretary Theresa Wilshere. 

Jack goes on to say “We have to remember what we are, we are English and we tackle hard and we are tough on the pitch and we are hard to beat. We have great characters. You think of Spain and they are technical, but you think of England and you think they are brave and they tackle hard.” I agree, I agree so much I don't know where to begin agreeing. England 'has great characters' I mean except for the likes of Gareth Barry, Phil Jagielka, and the manager Roy 'wet blanket' Hodgson that is definitely absolutely universally TRUE, and England has brave players like Scott Parker, Ashley Young and Theo Walcott, and they are hard to beat (unless you're a half-decent footballing nation), and England do tackle hard (except for when they don't). Well said Jack mate, now why don't you have a cigarette on me.  

Renowned brainbox Alan Shearer is in Jack's corner here too - he thinks that to play for England you should have to be born in England, though he never objected to Owen Hargreaves, Wilfred Zaha, Terry Butcher or John Barnes, I'm sure he would have, if someone had asked him. Thank fuck they didn't. 

It's not as if Jack Wilshere would just be rattling off an easy phrase without really thinking about what it means to be of a certain nationality. Jack Wilshere, I happen to know, is a very deep philosophical young man. He will have thought through exactly what it takes to be English, what it means to be English, he won't just be borrowing tired, easy patriotic stereotypes and manipulating them into speech with all the rhetorical skill of a bucket of dead shellfish. That is absolutely not what Jack Wilshere would do. FYI - I actually used to like him, as a player.

Wayne Rooney has come out and PROMISED "We're going to do it. We are going to get to the World Cup" - which leads me to propose the following tentative prediction - England won't qualify automatically. It's an evidence based prediction rather than a gut feeling. The evidence is that England have won 4 games at home & away against Moldova and San Marino, they have drawn against everyone who wasnt one of these two eternal no-hopers. So the evidence would therefore suggest that England will fail to win their remaining qualifiers given that they are being played against teams who can actually field professional footballers rather than semi-professional fish-mongers.

But what of England's final opponents. Well, first there is Montenegro, with their population which is significantly smaller than Birmingham (imagine if England could only pick from Gabby Agbonlahor, Micah Richards and Richard Hammond), they will be featuring star players drawn from the likes of Tom Tomsk, FC Seoul, Amkar Perm, Kuban Krasnodar, Kayserispor, Gaziantepspor, Spartak Nalchik and Anorthosis Famagusta. Manager Branko Brnovic is a veteran of 100 league appearances for Buducnost, in an illustrious career that also took in Partizan Belgrade and FC Kom. Expect 10 men behind the ball against the tough, quick, aggressive Montenegrin attack. Poland, meanwhile, offer the opportunity for making insensitive World War II jokes. Let's see if they can cope with Roy's British Expeditionary Force and their uniquely un-blitzy take on blitzkreig, which involves keeping shape and playing a patient passing game. That'll have them on the run.

Putting Group H to one side there are the other home nations - the Scottish Express runs the headline 'Gordon Strachan will get us back among the elite' - yes BACK among the elite, that is the elite of Norway, Iceland and Slovenia, I can only assume. Mansfield-born Kris Commons has opened the door to an international return for Scotland, though NOT IF JACK WILSHERE HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT (which he fucking might). Craig Bellamy has refused to rule out becoming the next Wales manager following his international retirement, he has also refused to rule out becoming the next Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and a judge in the 2014 Miss India pageant. The Welsh squad meanwhile has been severely depleted by injury, they've lost TEN players ahead of their final two qualifiers, two crucial games which could make all the difference in the race to still not qualify anyway. Michael O'Neill has challenged his Northern Ireland team to end their campaign on a high by maybe not actually losing Azerbaijan or Israel. O'Neill himself is chasing a new contract, and he has the unique bargaining point of having guided a team of basically professional footballers to defeat against the mighty Luxembourg. He will get that extension, unless that kid that won 10 titles with Crawley Town on Football Manager makes himself available to take over after he finishes his GCSE's. Richard Dunne and Andy Reid's call-ups will add some very serious weight to the Republic of Ireland effort, as they face two games which count for much less than nothing.