There is no news today!

Well, at least until the F.A. have finished their meeting.

I guess most English football fans were feeling like me yesterday evening - relieved.

Thankful that we won’t have to send that team with that coach to the Euro finals next year, where surely even bigger embarrassments would be waiting. In a game where we needed at the very least a draw, we contrived to arrange a sinking exit on a rain soaked Wembley pitch still carrying the hashmarks and divots of an American football game a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps a few gargantuan guards, tackles, and safeties may have helped England’s hapless efforts and a quarterback may have generalled a more adequate game plan than the inept scheme on offer last night.

In the most important game of his managerial career Steve McClaren decided to risk all with a virtual rookie international goalkeeper who repaid the faith in him by playing Santa in November. Attack is normally the best form of defence, well it would have been better than our back four’s calamitous efforts, however the 4-5-1 formation simply invited the Croats to come and have a go, and boy did they! Having failed to stop the onslaught in the opening twenty minutes we changed to a 4-4-2 for the second half and began to make amends after the very fortunate penalty (some referees may not have noticed such a shifty shirt pull) Beckham’s glorious cross and Crouch’s sublime finish ought to have heralded a period of 11 men behind the ball as we held on for the single point that we needed. But no, McClaren allowed the team to carry on flooding into the Croatian half exposing our weak defence once again, and we paid the price.

Quite frankly we simply didn’t deserve to go to the finals.

So the hot money is now on a sacking, the clever money on a reorganisation of the English game. How do we make winners of the national team?

Do we introduce quotas on foreign players in the Premiership, or is that too protectionist? Do we force more money into the lower levels of the game and improve coaching methods? Should they stop dithering over the F.A. Coaching centre?

How would you turn around England’s fortunes?

Update 09.45

McClaren, at home in Yarm (according to BBC Radio 5 Live) has confirmed that he has been sacked, and please stop talking about giving the job to Shearer, he hasn’t even managed a sweet shop yet!

Update 13.50

He was in the South-East all of the time - shows how little you can trust the BBC sometimes.