After another dismal performance against Spain that made everyone realise that maybe the problem with Sven’s England wasn’t Sven, Stevie Mac moved on from defending his failures as Premiership manager to rolling out the cliches to defend himself as England manager,
‘They know it’s not easy, that they’ve not got a divine right to be in the team, not got a divine right to qualify and that they have to work hard towards that.
‘They know what they have to do and they will be ready in six weeks to do that.’
‘It’s what we all have to do, even though the criticism will fly. But we know what we’re doing, we know where we are, we know that by six weeks time we’ll have a completely different face on what we have at the present.
‘He (Wayne Rooney) wins you football matches, everybody knows his importance,’ McClaren said. ‘He can make a difference and I think that was the thing missing – quality in the final third.’
Bearing in mind that Steve “I’m So Smug” McClaren has had the entire of Sven’s reign as well as his own to figure out how to get the best out of this England team, it’s nice to know that it all boils down to whether or not Wayne Rooney is playing. Not like there’s anyone else in the squad with a bit of quality, after all…