England Fail To Qualify For Euro 2008

Am I surprised? No.

For years the English have lived off the back of our famous 1966 win……shame it was 41 years ago now. The recent championships that England have attended have seen them stuggle to get past the group stages only to be knocked out on penalties. The masses get excited, purchase the flags, bunk off work to watch the games and with real expectation that this year could be it, watch England fail.

There’s no excusing England, they drew with the likes of Macedonia and then went off to Russia and lost. Israel even threw them a lifeline by beating Russia, all we needed to do was secure a draw against an in-form Croatian team (who incidentally had already qualified).

Watching the first half last night, I watched as the new England keeper Scott Carson throws the ball into his own net, I watch Joleon Lescott and Sol Campbell panic everytime they get the ball and depise the whole of the midfield as they get completely outplayed by a more organised outfit.

It’s not that the players don’t care, I don’t believe even someone on £100,000 a week is prepared to shrug off a dismal qualifying campaign. The manager shifted the team around far to many times, relied on big names and not in-form players and basically set us up to lose. England when they did play, tried to hard and didnt let the football come naturally, everything seemed forced and laboured.

McLaren is gone, hopefully so will a few players like Owen, Lampard and Beckham when we get a new manager. Who do you think? I think its going to be Mourinho, possibly shading Capello.

Gamblers Anonymous

If you are familiar with your football, you would have known that there were a number of English teams in action in the UEFA Cup. Tottenham (my team), Everton and Bolton were in action and were all live on terrestrial television. Coming in from work with only thirty minutes left in the Tottenham game, I staked £30 at odds of 2/1 on the score to stay as it was, 2-0. Secretly hoping that they wouldn’t score, I held on to the sofa as Tottenham stuttered to win me £30.

The Everton match was a cagy game, whilst Everton dominated proceedings, Betfair still gave odds of 3/1 for an Everton win so with Katie and her dad’s opinion, I stuck on £15 on the win. What do you know? Everton win 2-0!

All in all, I was up over £50, taking my betting balance well over £100. I withdrew £20 into my account and will use the rest of my balance to bet on clever bets, taking out my winnings on each bet. Hopefully it will make me some extra dollar each week.