All the trappings can’t beat success

ALL right, so it hadn’t exactly been going to plan. Yes, England are through but at what cost to their psychological well-being.

Your so-called media is on the case all the time, giving it England should be winning, England should be this, England should be that, bladdy blah. But as usual they’re talking out their vuvuzela.

How many of them have come here, to a foreign country, been made to stay in a five-star hotel, have everything done for them, been waited on hand and foot, been fed perfect food with everything they need to hand? I mean, in the same circumstances all of them would tell the world to do one while they carried on putting their feet up round the pool, wouldn’t they? To go out and beat Slovenia 1-0 when you is mentally in the middle of a bleedin month-long holiday in a luxury spa is surely worthy of credit. That’s what JT and Big Frank and Carra and Stevie G was telling me when we met up by the team bus yesterday.