Let the clichés begin, ‘no minnows in international football’, ‘all we wanted at this stage of the competition were three points’, ‘a good, workmanlike performance’, ‘they were only interested in defending and kept 11 men behind the ball’ and just because they are clichés doesn’t mean they are not true, but equally they don’t tell the fundamental truth of the game, at least as I saw it, England did what the talking heads wanted them to do, we tried to play a ‘technical’ game, ball on the ground, quick passes to feet, pretty patterns. And prior to the opening goal, from a set piece mind, it delivered fuck all. I’m not about to go looking for match stats but my impression was that apart from dealing with the odd cross and picking the ball out of the net twice, the Andorra goalkeeper was required to make about as many saves as David James. How can this be when we have about 70% possession? I’m sure he wasn’t as relaxed as James with the ball spending so much time in the Andorra half but it’s not as if we were limited to two goals due to him standing on his head. Terry showed his limited distribution skills, Lampard should have been all over this game like white on rice and was anonymous again with Barry being the most effective in midfield, Wallcott was good but, ultimately, never delivered the killer ball.
Chris Waddle was dribbling on about how well we were playing this technical game whilst it delivered nothing, there is nothing wrong with having this sort of game available but plan B is still needed, maybe if we hadn’t have scored then it might have been forthcoming after about 60 minutes but that remains to be seen.