Rooney was still not on his game, but overall an improvement (not by a large amount)
Just Rooney?
Rooney wasn't just 'not on his game', he was cr@p, and I mean real cr@p.
Terry played well, as did Ashley Cole and James.
There was a spell at the beginning when Milner couldn't pass time let alone a football, he did a couple of good crosses apart from that, his performance was poor to middling as was about everybody else's.
I had been screaming for Joe Cole to be used only for his eventual appearance to explode in sub-mediocrity.
Defoe managed to score with his shin but his normal darting runs he does for my beloved Spurs were sparse as was his overall performance.
We did however play better but let's be honest here, it really couldn't have got much worse than our last game, a game that one could witness on Hackney marshes any Sunday morning of the football season, it was so dire it was diarrhoea ....
But the result was great???
I agree, well sorta .... we won but really, does a 1-0 victory over a third rate international team constitute great, or even good, or even satisfactory?
I could rightly question all of those.
If we play this 'great' against Germany, they won't beat us, they will smash us to pieces.
But .... I'm one of the few on these boards who can actually remember us winning the World Cup and 'hope springs eternal' as some people say.
I am English and proud of whatever it is we are supposed to stand for and for that reason I am hoping those over-paid ingrates we have as our football representatives might find it within themselves to give us a performance against the Krauts that may go some way to doing us justice ... we do actually possess the ability to beat the Germans, and convincingly so but it remains to be seen as to whether or not the players we have are able to get their finger out their ass, play with some pride, pay some respect to all those fans who paid thousands to go over there and to the millions back at home, to stop thinking about themselves every fackin minute of the day and just go play the game of football we all love .. they can do it alright but have they the heart to dredge it up?
I do not have a very high opinion of our footballers as you may have guessed and some people could justifiably ask me why I continue to support them?
The answer is, I might not like any of them fairies but they do represent me at this world cup and because of that, I am honour-bound to support them.
I really wish they could earn not only our support but our respect ... I kinda think the latter would be even more difficult achievement for them than the world cup and so hey, at least we got the easier of the two to get behind
PS The reason I term a lot of our players 'fairies' [not all] is because of the feigned injuries a lot of these so-called pros perform when they get tackled or even brushed ........ I ain't saying I am a tough man but I played football in an era when it would have been shameful to pretend to be hurt to win a free-kick or to try and get some innocent schmuck sent off.
I wonder just how many rugby players/entusiasts watch our beloved game of football and laugh .... a laughter that inevitably subsides into an embarrassed chuckle at the way grown 'men' behave?