Whatever happened to the Golden Generation....

Other than Steve McClaren and penalty shoot-out, the two words that strike fear and loathing into the hearts of England supporters more than any other are Golden Generation.

Three years ago, England strutted around Germany looking and sounding like world champions and confidently proclaimed football would finally be coming home.

When England's luxury jet returned to these shores, however, the only things of value to be found in the luggage compartment were the designer products purchased by our world class WAGs.

Under Fabio Capello, any such talk of an elite group of players re-writing football history in South Africa next summer is unheard of, and for good reason - on current form we don't have any elite players.

That so-called Golden Generation is again likely to form the bedrock of England's assault on the World Cup in South Africa, and yet it seems to have gone unnoticed, amid the furore surrounding Manchester City, that it's a jolly good thing things aren't kicking-off tomorrow...just look at the evidence.


Rio Ferdinand:
Last seen impersonating the defender formerly known as Rio during Manchester United's no show at Anfield in late October. His form prior to that 2-0 defeat was hardly inspiring - witness his inability to keep pace with Craig Bellamy in the Manchester derby and brain dead back pass which gifted Holland the lead in an August friendly - and his increasingly fragile body suggests he's not the sort of player who can be relied upon to withstand the rigours of potentially playing seven games in the space of a month.

John Terry:
If you're the captain of England, surely no good can ever come of befriending someone who goes by the name Terry 'the ticket' Bruce. Even so, in relation to this latest tabloid rumble, the first question we should concern ourselves with is what type of moron pays £10,000 for the privilege of watching Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack enjoy a bubble bath together in their Speedos?

That aside, Terry's form is of increasing concern and there are some who believe he has never looked the same commanding figure he is for Chelsea on the international stage. Petr Cech has copped most of the flak for his side's set piece weakness, but as skipper, defensive organiser and their strongest aerial presence, Terry appears to have got off pretty lightly in the blame game.

Frank Lampard:
Take away his contributions from the penalty spot and you'd be hard pressed to find enough footage to fill a Frank Lampard 2009/10 youtube compilation video. Under Carlo Ancelotti, like Michael Essien, England's most eloquent midfielder is in danger of becoming just another cog in the wheel at Chelsea, rather than the all-action driving force he was under previous managers.

He went 10 games without a club goal earlier this season, and although you couldn't argue he's been anything other than neat, tidy and efficient over the course of the last month, you could say the same about Mark Noble at West Ham, and he won't be lining up for England against USA on June 12.

Steven Gerrard:
I never thought I'd live to see the day that the most talented all-round footballer this country has produced since Paul Gascoigne - forget Wayne Rooney, we'll come to him in a minute - would be out thought and out battled by a player as limited as Portsmouth's Michael Brown. December 19, 2009 was a dark day for English football, not just Liverpool FC. Fitness issues can longer be offered as an excuse for Gerrard's lack of dynamacism.

He's started his side's last eight matches, three of those alongside Fernando Torres, and has only 'that' penalty against Birmingham to show for his efforts. Were Rafael Benitez to contemplate dropping his captain, the Spaniard might as well douse himself in petrol, take a seat on the Kop and ask the closest cheeky scouser for a light.

The master of the sideways pass, Lucas, bears the brunt of the abuse dished out by the Kop, but Liverpool fans expect nothing of him and aren't overly disappointed when his only contribution over the course of 90 minutes is winning the race to congratulate the goalscorer. Of Gerrard, infinitely more is expected.

Wayne Rooney:
Sorry to bang on about it, especially as we are likely to need reliable penalty takers in the summer, but take away Rooney's efforts from 12 yards this season and you're left with eight goals from open play this season. While that's far from a disgraceful return, it needs to be measured against the standards set by the man he has effectively replaced, Cristiano Ronaldo.

At this stage of the campaign 12 months ago, the Portugal forward had scored ten times, having missed the first month of the season and, before you say it, only one of those came from the penalty spot.

As United's linchpin, Rooney's prerequisite is not to dominate or decorate certain games, he's expected to dictate an entire campaign. Rooney hasn't been United's 'go to' man in the big games this season, indeed it's been Darren Fletcher who has caught the eye in the heavyweight contests.

Nobody can doubt Rooney's abundant talent, but the feeling persists that neither Sir Alex Ferguson nor Capello can truly say they have concocted a way of harnessing it to its full potential. If they had, Rooney, not Lionel Messi, would've been accepting Fifa's World Player of the Year gong this week.

Here's hoping Capello can break the code ahead of next summer.

Arsene's tirade was spot on, but long overdue...

Arsene Wenger is not a man to take drastic action at the drop of a hat. A subtle variation in the amount of water sprinkled on the pitch prior to a match at Emirates Stadium is as close to radical change as the Frenchman usually gets.

But with the stench his side created by virtue of a wretched first-half performance at Anfield clogging up his Gallic nostrils, Wenger realised it was time to fire up the hair-drier and tell a few home truths.

Too many times in the past the ire that follows defeat has been directed at an inappropriate target. The Dutch FA, Didier Drogba and the fixture compilers have all been responsible this season for Arsenal's failure to hang onto Chelsea's coat tails, according to their manager.

Though the opening 45 minutes verged on inexcusablel, it was by no means an isolated instance of his side failing to compete physically against opposition set-up to expose the weaknesses that have been apparent in Wenger's fragile side ever since Patrick Vieira tucked away an FA Cup winning penalty.

Wenger would have been well within his rights to question whether his mollycoddled youngsters were fit to wear their shirts following gutless defeats at Fulham, Stoke and Manchester City last season.

Of course, he chose not to and suffered the consequences as his team tried to ballet dance their way to the finals of the FA Cup and Champions League, only to be chewed up and spat out by footballing giants who appreciate it takes more than performing triple saltos to win important matches.

Yesterday's half-time dressing down, however, may have represented a turning of the tide. In actual terms, a victory at Anfield these days is not the badge of honour it once was, but having rightly assessed that this season's champions won't have to live up to the heights hit by recent Premier League winners, Wenger knew this was an opportunity his side could ill afford to pass up.

That his verbal assault prompted a recovery within 15 minutes of the restart cannot be labelled the masterstoke many are claiming it to be on account of the helping hand they were given by the incompetent Glen Johnson.

Indeed, Wenger was merely reading a riot act that should have been delivered a long time ago to a group of players who give the impression they don't quite share their manager's conviction regarding their ability to mount a serious challenge to Manchester United and Chelsea.

We are never likely to learn just how how cutting Wenger's half-time oration was. How far it sank into the collective conscience of his squad wil, however, be revealed at Burnley on Wednesday.

Anything less than a repeat of the application they demonstrated in the second 45 minutes will suggest his words were forgotten by the time the team coach reversed out of the famous Shankly Gates.

Tiger's gone, but it won't be for long

And like that, he was gone.

After discovering the man she married was a compulsive shagger, Tiger Woods' transgressed wife, the lovely Elin, was always likely to offer him an ultimatum that went along the lines of: carry on swinging, with clubs or other women, and you'll lose me and be forced give over half of that fortune you've built on the back of being the most successful sportsman on the planet.

And who could blame her?

Having been unmasked as a liar, it's hard to believe Woods when he claims the indefinite break he plans to take from golf is motivated by a determination to save his marriage and rebuild a shattered family.

Those are the views shared by BBC pundit and former European Tour player Jay Townsend, who said: "You have to wonder about the validity and truthfulness of anything he says right now.

"It comes down to his wife Elin. I think she's running the show right now and I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of people disappear from his inner circle. They had to know about what was going on. In her mind they have to be part of what happened."

A more likely reason for this enforced sabbatical - the man who has come as close, along with Roger Federer and Michael Jordan, to achieving sporting perfection over the course of the past 30 years, knows he's now been stripped of the cloak of invincibility golf afforded him.

He can't go back to 'that place' in the knowledge that he's no longer the man every golf fan wants to be, while the reception in the locker room his likely to equally frosty.

Jesper Parnevik, the maverick Swedish golfer who introduced Mr and Mrs Woods, provided the the most telling soundbite of the last fortnight when he suggested Elin should have taken a driver, instead of a nine iron, to Tiger's face. Clearly Tiger aint going to be Mr Popular, if and when he returns to the circuit.

Whether his marriage is beyond salvation, only two people know. His career, despite what his fellow pros might feel about him, on the other hand, is far from beyond repair.

Whatever the wrongs of his behaviour, and there are plenty, he's not the first celebrity to have been caught with his pants down. David Beckham was famously found to be having it off with everyone's favourite reality TV pig pleasurer, Rebecca Loos, and it hardly did his commercial stock any harm.

Woods' sponsors have been queuing up to offer their full support, while the golfing community is doing its best to toe the 'family must come first' party line, in the knowledge that their sport is infinitely less attractive and marketable without him.

A break is unlikely to prevent further revelations surfacing in tabloid newspapers around the globe, but it will afford Tiger the chance to cleanse his mind and return to golf without the fear and pressure that comes with having to pretend to be someone your not.

Overhauling Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major titles is not the sort of lifelong ambition that dies as a result of being caught bedding a couple of porn stars - anyone connected with golf at any level will be praying that's the case.

Oh Sven, what have you done now...

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."
— Douglas Adams

That famous quote sprang to mind this morning when the news of the latest twist in the utterly predictable, rapid and ultimately sad demise of Notts County unravelled - just substitute the word duck for sham and you get the gist.

When Sven-Goran Eriksson cheerily rumbled into town boldly promising world class acquisitions and Premier League football within five years, you feared only those with a feint grasp of reality would buy into the pipedream.

Strangely, Luis Figo and Pavel Nedved, unlike Sol 'I'd quite like to play for Manchester United now - no shit Sherlock' Campbell briefly, failed to be tempted by the prospect of sharing a dressing room with hit and run killer Lee Hughes, or testing whether or not their ageing limbs could tame Underhill's famous slope.

While most were questioning the feasibility of taking a League Two side, albeit one with history and pedigree, to the Promised Land in double quick time, the teaser everyone should've been concerning themselves with was: what's in it for Svennis?

In this instance it was an enormous pay cheque for whispering sweet nothings in the ears of gullible County fans, and biting his tongue should he find the sausage rolls in the directors box at Morecambe not quite to the liking of a palate that has been refined through years of dining out on a reputation that should have expired around the time he was caught dicking around with Faria Alam.

With the mysterious Munto finance - surely the alarm bells should have started ringing far sooner with a name like that - putting the club up for sale, it's now up to Eriksson and the equally annoying Peter Trembling, the club's executive chairman, to front a takeover.

The Daily Mail also report that a consortium of three Pakistan businessmen are interested in a club that had seemed to have the healthiest of futures when sold to the Qadbak group last summer. Indeed, it was Qadbak who brought in £2million-a-year Eriksson to plot a five-year path to the Premier League.

Since then, Qadbak’s chronic lack of finances has slowly come to light, and arrived at a head last week when it was revealed that Eriksson might be walking out of Meadow Lane as the majority of his promised dosh — the part paid by Qadbak — had not been honoured.

What happens next is probably not even worth considering if you are a County supporter, or that poor sod Hans Backe, who was convinced by Eriksson to accept the managerial gig following the sacking of Ian McParland instead of becoming Sweden's national coach.

The likelihood of Eriksson, however, being around the Nottingham area post Christmas must be regarded as exceptionally unlikely, particularly with the possibility of another massive pay cheque heading his way were he to accept the overtures emanating from North Korea.

Oh to be a fly on the wall when crackpot Despot Kim Jong Il, the man who fires missiles into the Pacific like they were confetti, summons Sven to ask whether a first round World Cup exit could in any way, shape or form be linked to a night of high jinx with the England WAGs.

Michael Owen: A timely reminder or a fleeting flashback?

"A hat-trick in Germany for England and a hat-trick in Germany for Manchester United," sagely observed Martin Tyler last night, conveniently forgetting that eight turbulent years have passed since Michael Owen convinced us that Sven-Goran Eriksson's Midas touch stretched further than his bedroom.

Unfortunately, that night in Munich, glorious as it was, turned out to be the peak for Eriksson, and until now for Owen, too.

Injuries, poor career choices and more injuries have seen Owen's star fade ever since he performed the celebratory forward roll (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3HCHS5cdP4) which made Robbie Keane look like Nadia Kominech.

A Carling Cup final victory over Manchester United, in which he scored the clincher, was the highlight of his final few years on Merseyside, and though he was unlucky to be shoved down the pecking order at Real Madrid, where his goals per game ratio was more than respectable, it was inevitable that a player so similar in style, and with the same obsession for scoring goals, would never dislodge Raul as the darling of the Bernabeu.

Then, with virtually the entire Premier League falling over themselves to bring him back from Spain, he committed footballing suicide by choosing Newcastle over, Liverpool, Everton, Spurs and Arsenal.

He cut a disconsolate figure on Tyneside to the extent that he reminded me of football's own Brian Wilson. The creative genius behind the Beach Boys in the early 1960s knew nothing but hit after hit, before he decided to stop touring in 1964 and went a big gaga.

While Owen didn't quit football, so sporadic and infrequent were his appearances in a black and white shirt, he might as well have done. And though he didn't have a breakdown, you wouldn't have blamed him for having one as St James' Park went into meltdown.

It took Wilson until 2004 and the release of Smile, a record he began working on 38 years previously, to emerge from the doldrums, prove his genius was still intact and gain the true acclaim his talent deserves.

Was last night in Wolfsburg Michael Owen's 'Smile'?

His summer move to Manchester United was supposed to catapult him back into the England squad, but he's had trouble thus far in forcing his way past Danny Welbeck and Fredericho Macheda as the immediate back-up to Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov.

Though he scored the winner in the Manchester derby, his only other goalscoring contributions prior to last night came in a Carling Cup tie at Barnsley, a 5-1 romp at Wigan and the 3-3 draw at home to CSKA Moscow last month.

It's hardly the sort of from to have Fabio Capello radically revising his plans for South Africa, and until he can produce his predatory performance against the German champions on a regular basis, last night's heroics will only represent a flashback to the player he once was, instead of a reminder of the player he still could be.

Let us play a little game of spot the difference...

There were plenty of talking points to come out of another highly charged Premier League weekend.

Is Carlo Ancelotti just Phil Scolari in a silly hat? After Jermain Defoe and Frank Lampard both cracked from 12 yards, is it worth England bothering to compete in a penalty shootout next summer should any of their matches go the full distance? When did Birmingham become any good?

All of these matters have been given more than a passing mention in the national press, or by the shiny suited men in the respective comfy studios of the BBC and SKY.

Steven Gerrard's blatant act of cheating, however, up at Ewood Park - why it's as if it never happened.

Consider the following two video clips and let us compare and contrast...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulMtA-gYNXg
http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/4119353/

Both were dives designed to con a referee, both were accompanied by torturous backing music, one dive was by an honourable Englishman and ambassador for the game, the other by a nasty oily foreign type, responsible for stinking out the domestic game with his mastery of the dark arts.

Eduardo's dive - though at least he can point to Artur Boruc's tummy flab making the slightest contact with is trailing leg - resulted in a national vendetta against him, a UEFA ban, which was subsequently rescinded, and sparked a Daily Mail campaign against diving.

Gerrard, a man who has aired some very public and forthright musings on the subject of diving, however, has escaped any semblance of a media backlash whatsoever. So sycophantic is Andy Gray's last word show, that I can't ever bring my self to watch it, but I'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar he didn't feel the need to mention it, while the BBC had two opportunities to highlight it, and chose not to.

Meanwhile, the newspaper reports I've seen on Saturday's match centre on Alberto Aquilani's full-debut in a meaningless Champions League game, rather than what should have been the main talking point of the Blackburn stalemate

Now diving doesn't bother me to the extent that it upsets the majority of football fans. Like shirt tugging at corners, haranguing of fourth officials and that stupid active / inactive off-side bollocks, it has become part of the game.

What does irk me, however, is hypocrisy and xenophobia. All of England's leading lights who will be at the forefront of our challenge for World Cup glory have all taken a tumble under zero pressure before, and you don't have to trawl the internet for very long to find examples.

That Eduardo should have been made a scapegoat - he's booed at every away ground he's visited since the Celtic farce having previously had the weight of public sympathy firmly behind him - stinks to high heaven.

So the next time we castigate Johnny Foreigner for attempting to deceive our upstanding referees, remember, despite what the powers that be want you to think, our lads aren't the clean cut, law abiding gentlefolk Messrs Lineker, Chiles, Redknapp and Keys and the lads in the TV editing booths would have you believe.

A cautionary tale for cocky England...

Of course it took Sky Sports News less than 15 minutes to wheel out a batch of overexcited England fans predicting world domination following yesterday's interminable World Cup draw - was I the only one unable to take any of it in?

Maybe it was the shock of seeing an unshaven Gary Lineker combined with the latest in a long line of spectacular Alan Shearer wardrobe malfunctions, but ask me who Holland or Spain have been drawn with, and I simply couldn't tell you.

Try as we might, a nation weighed down by grim economic forecasts refuses to learn from the past when the chance to imagine a summer of alcoholic excess, cheering on men you despise on a weekly basis when supporting your club, culminates in Wayne Rooney falling off an open top bus wearing a set of fake plastic breasts celebrating semi-final heartache rears its head.

Fair enough, everyone should be allowed the right to dream, and this morning's front page of The Sun is a work of art, but hold your horses chaps, this probably aint going to be the cakewalk everyone is predicting.

Slovenia - I had to check it wasn't Slovakia so hard has it been to digest yesterday's stream of never-ending information - beat Russia in a two-legged play-off, and although Algeria should prove cannon fodder, you should remember it took England 83 minutes and an illegal tug of dreadlocks to break down Trinidad & Tobago in Nuremberg three years ago.

And so to the good old US of A. Soccerball might still be something of a minority sport across the pond, despite Sir David of Beckhenham's best efforts, but these boys really can play. Not that they've needed to be any good to topple England in the past - remember that ginger bearded, Nickelback lead singer wannabe Alexi Lalas embarrassing Graham Taylor's men in 1993?

More pertinently, before we start mapping out the victory parade through Trafalgar Square, Don Fabio should point his troops in the direction of the World Cup history books, specifically Brazil 1950, to illustrate that pride really does become before a fall.

England travelled to South America as the "Kings of Football" boasting a near flawless post-war record, while the Americans were ranked as 500-1 tournament outsiders and had lost their previous seven internationals.

For a team containing footballing luminaries such as Alf Ramsey, Billy Wright, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen, teaching Uncle Sam a lesson was supposed to be a formality. If you don't already know, you can guess where this is heading.....England lost 1-0 and subsequently crashed at the first hurdle.

So, while there is nothing wrong in showing a bit of nationalistic pride and passion - please note, however, painting a St George's cross on a bald head will always make you look like a twat - lumping on England to come back from South Africa next summer with more than just another story of glorious failure is unlikely to make you rich.

What next for the FAI...An X-Factor sing-off?

And so the Football Association of Ireland's request to become the 33rd team at the 2010 World Cup was thrown out yesterday.

It was an idea so preposterous that even blundering Fifa president Sepp Blatter, the man who insisted the women's game would lend it self to a wider audience were the participants to wear skimpier kits, gave it less than a moments thought.

Now any sane governing body would see Blatter's rejection as the final rebuttal, time to burn the folder marked 'World Cup Appeal' and concentrate on more pressing matters like 'how he fuck does Paul McShane still get in our side? Surely we should be developing better players'.

But the conduct of the FAI throughout this whole tedious affair - never have the words toys, pram, throwing, their, out and of, been so appropriate - suggests this is aint the end of the road as far as they're concerned.

Here follows the next possible installment in Ireland's desperate bid to be involved next summer.

X-Factor sing-off - Jedward v Celine Dion:
Now I'm not entirely sure, nor do I care, which part of Ireland those two twin twerps hail from, but that never seemed to matter when Jack Charlton was picking his team (see Cascarino Tony, Townsend Andy, Houghton Ray et al). And if we're playing by those rules, Celine Dion, by virtue of her French ancestry, will be singing from the blue corner.

Outcome: Jedward, belting out a rap version of Nessun dorma, wow the X-Factor live audience and have Louis Walsh barking and clapping like a baby seal, screaming "vote for my boys". Blatter scribbles a note and passes it to Walsh. It reads: "Shut up you weird fuck, this is not how we rig a vote in my organisation."

Jedward's effort wins votes among those who fell in love with football during Italia 90, but Dion's rendition of I Will Always Love You, played out to a backdrop of emotive images of handball villain Thierry Henry tug at the heartstrings of a global audience.

Verdict: After Walsh and Cheryl Cole - she doesn't like Henry because he was paid more money at Arsenal than her husband - vote for Jedward, it's up to Simon Cowell and Danni 'this is supposed to be a singing contest' Minogue to take the competition to Deadlock.

Blatter, standing in for metatarsal victim Dermot O'Leary, then reveals the result of the public vote, and declares that France are to keep their place in South Africa thanks to Dion's efforts.

The FAI instantly submit World Cup Appeal Plan C, a Master Chef cook-off between Ready Steady Cook veteran Paul Rankin and housewives' favourite Jean-Christophe Novelli.