Beyond the gloom, faraway hills may genuinely be green

You gotta larf. The only other option is to cry, to look ahead to next summer’s World Cup with a knowing dread and to what will, on all recent form, be another public bout of self-flagellation on the part of the England football team, its supporters and a media that feeds off the national XI like a shoal of sharks.

It’s already started.

Barely 24 hours had passed before England’s latest qualification for a major tournament was sullied, this time by Roy Hodgson’s leaked space monkey remark in what should have been the sanctity of the home dressing room as they addressed how to overcome the Poles at Wembley and book their berths in Brazil.