Injury-prone Michael Owen might need his head checking as well as his dodgy knackered limbs. He told The Sun after the World Cup qualifying draw, in which England were again paired with Croatia, that:
“I don’t think any of the Croatian team would get into our team. Doesn’t that tell you it’s not about ability or technique but in the mind. We have very demanding fans and a media who expect a great deal from the England team — and rightly so. How we, as players, cope with that is where the problem lies. I watched the Croatia game and so often it broke down purely because of pressure. It came down to the pressure of making a mistake when it mattered. If we’d won the games we should have, we wouldn’t have ended up putting that kind of pressure on ourselves. It was our own fault.”
Not a single player would get into the England side? Does Owen need his head checking? Little Micky continued with this dazzling display of optimism saying:
“When I look around the England squad and see the talent we have, I cannot imagine that we will not win something. A few lucky breaks at the right time wouldn’t go amiss — but we can’t just rely on good luck to see us through. We have got to apply the ability we have got — and I dare anyone to say it is not there.”
Has he no idea that we failed to qualify for Euro 2008, and Croatia did us at Wembley in the crappy denouement? And what is all this guff about not a single Croatia player getting into the England team? The goalie would definitely waltz into the team and the way the defence played last week Bilic could probably dust off his boots and get into the England side too. And what of Portsmouth’s Kranjcar, he’d get in surely?