Simple Rev; the players thought McClaren was an idiot and behaved like any workers do when they have zero confidence in the boss. At Liverpool, Gerard is expected to regularly bail another half-baked manager out of the doodah and does so but the other players' egos get in the way of him fulfilling that role for England. There was a revealing scatter diagram from opta of the positioning of Gerard, Barry and Lampard on the pitch in their last full England games before Croatia. Gerard and Barry had clear midfield focus whereas Lampard's map looked like a headless chicken had been let loose- his colleagues wouldn't have had a clue where he was and any instinctive half-look passes to Lampard completely ruled out. If you watch teams that are good at getting and retaining the ball, there is usually a predictable formation of potential receivers relative to the player in posession/opposition player to be disposessed. It allows for the glanced look out-ball which creates the sort of fluidity of movement which the ponderous stop and look for options characterising England's play always lacks. That sort of pressure play formation has never been an aspect of McClaren's approach whether at Boro or at England. With Man U, watch the concertina-ing 4-4-2 formation with players running onto the ball when they are in posession or attacking the opposition player in posession in waves but invariably in a forwards momentum. At Arsenal it is the close proximity diagonal ball played rapidly and instinctively which to my eyes is the style Sparky is trying to emulate at Rovers and is the reason why Rovers in full flow this season are such a joy to watch. At Chelsea it was the rigorous defensive/ cautious set-up of Mourinho which made them so hard to beat combined by great timing of midfield runs primarilly executed by Lampard. With England's McClaren, it was basically lucky dip time on the basics sacrificed to his latest complex theory of multi-level formation. Anyway looks like the Rafa rotator could be very close to the Liverpool exit door. Roar won't be happy but its as plain as the nose on Phil Thompson's face that Rafa will never win the Premiership for Liverpool. He'd be a disaster in the England job as well. There is a poll on Brian Barwick's future in the Guardian as well. 97% say he should go. Quite a divergence in the poress this morning- Telegraph says O'Neill is getting ready to take the England job. Times says O'Neill has ruled himself out.

Incidentally great headed goal by MGP here in Malta last night- a real cracker.

To answer Daren's post, the current estimate is that England not being at the Euros will wipe a cool £1 billion off UK expenditure during the period of the competition next summer compared with what it would have been had England been there (Scotland not being there has little impact- the Scots would have watched to cheer whoever was playing against England). I read that English non-participation would knock about 15% off Euro 2008 total revenue. That is both the impact on the UK audience and on the attractiveness to the anglophone global audience. TV rights to Croatia are probably only worth a fraction of the value of TV rights in the Republic.

Just for a giggle yesterday, I asked one of my junior staff to see if he could download our customer data with credit card details onto a CD-Rom to send to our other office by post (he was to bring the CD-rom to me if he actually got the copy). Thankfully the procedures stopped him. I am still left speechless that the procedures at HMRC were so weak. This surely is the time to go in for the kill on ID cards. We mightas well post all our personal details on an open blog on the web as give them to the Government.

I would imagine UEFA/Platinini will step in sharpish to kill the home nations idea. Euro 2008's economics have taken a battering already with the strongest football economy no longer interested and the global media market value dropping because of no English or Beckham involvement. The last thing they'll want at UEFA HQ is the English broadcasters saving their pennies from Switzerland and Austria because they are bidding for Home Nations coverage.

BBC comment not exactly pulling its punches. What a rant against McClaren! Croatia underline their superiority over England The Guardian The Madness of McClaren The Independent takes its lead from www.brfcs.co.uk McClaren was FIRED at 10.30pm this evening. according to the Sun There are no Englishmen good enough to manage England

Judging by the BBC panel, McClaren is dead meat The FA Board meeting at 08.30 tomorrow morning shows an unheard of degree of urgency. No doubt Nicko's mates will have done their unjudgemental sympathetic best (ho ho) and the FA bigwigs will have all choked on their cornflakes as they convene.

Well he scored the 4th for Norway against Malta this evening but Turkey won as well so he is going to have a summer off as well as Bentley.

Croatia were comfortably the better side over 90 minutes.

Very simple, smoking and obesity kill and injure far more people every year than drugs do. So does alcohol. That was the point of my post that started this thread. Lifting the drugs prohibition does not equate to a psychodelic free for all. Drugs would be heavilly taxed and subject to extensive controls. But I'd rather have the crooks of HMRC benefitting than mafia gangs. I'd rather have the potential damage done to the people who want to muck around with that stuff reduced by making sure of quality, quantity and have the infrastructure to get them off it when they have the will to do so. I'd rather price this stuff so the abusers and users do not have to turn to crime driving up the prison population unnecessarily by about a third and insurance premiums by between 10% and 15%. Above all I want an end to the ridiculous head in the sand hypocricy about halucogens which have been used by humanity since the dawn of time.

Wembley pitch- Windsor Park is better England defence- introduced to each other at kick-off England formation- time for McClaren to remember how he got a moderate Boro to score 4 in tough situations in Europe for Boro. Get the second EPL reserves quality England striker on now. The truth is, Croata have far too much quality all over the pitch.

Russia haven't scored yet....

I was not doubting the veracity and value of a lot of the research (not all of it) which goes behind those games' databases. What I was getting at was the "flog these 6 players, buy those 8" type of comments which forget the risks involved in transfers (particularly when you have a social and sporting well-bedded set-up which Rovers have at the moment) and the sheer overheads in costs (signing-on fees, signing-off fees, agents, wage drift) and managerial time involved. Andre Ooijer suffers in the minds of quite a few Rovers supporters from having had a rough settling in period in the Premiership. I bet that given his time over again, Sparky would not have dropped Ooijer for the Old Trafford match and stuck with him at right back and Bert in the centre of midfield. Andre seems to have a huge amount of football cunning and ability which compensates for his lack of pace.

VAT tribunal found Birmingham and Newcastle guilty of exactly the same offences as the FA are charging Luton with The Quest report disclosed that 16 Premiership clubs have done the same thing when it came to non-contracted payments to agents but presumably unlike Newcastle and Birmingham did not have the cheek to reclaim the VAT or have quietly settled with the VAT man. Agents talking about fighting the charges. I wonder what harm this is doing to Mike Newell's employment prospects- the fact that he spoke out publicly about a practice that seems to have been/be commonplace throughout football post-Bosman and only his former employers are getting the book thrown at them?

The illicit drugs industry

Ahh, Benni looking after a fan.

The latest goss. Or, "we haven't a clue and are still gobsmacked by yesterday's results". Napoleon asked for lucky generals. Problem is that judging by his Austria selection, McClown's genius will be in chucking it all away again.

Mark Hughes interview in Manchester

Benni dreaming of CL with Rovers African Nations Cup

An interestingly vituperative piece on England's plight

Mike Newell going onto the attack

And Venables thought... There is supposed to be a picture here of Venables looking like "what the **** was that?" as Beckham is substituted.

Everybody must now be praying for Russia to get the result they need. I shudder to think what McClown would consider to be a line-up capable of beating Croatia if we still need to win that one. Ah well, that's as close to Austria and Switzerland any of the home nationsare going to get in 2007/8. Austria were every bit as woeful as their recent form suggested from the bit I saw.

I'll have a look if Bentley comes on. Excellent post on 606 encouraging me to watch what I am missing: "This does not look like an England side desperate to inspire its fans to have hope, just a bunch of mismanaged crocks coming to pick up their payslips"

George Cohen calls it exactly as it is.