Quality Time

You simply can’t underestimate the value of good preparation and good management. Time to select the right players, get them together, bring them to the peak of fitness for an important competition, choose a formation that’s perfectly tailored to exploit their strengths and conceal their weaknesses, and work on principles of defence and attack and those all important set pieces.

So congratulations to Leo Beenhakker, an astute and highly experienced coach who has produced a Trinidad and Tobago side – many of them from extremely modest backgrounds - capable of holding the superstars of England for 82 minutes and creating one or two decent goalscoring opportunities of their own into the bargain.

The fact that in the last eight minutes Peter Crouch scored with a header which he facilitated by a preliminary tug on the dreadlocks of his marker and Steven Gerrard produced a sensational strike on the brink of full time should in no way diminish the achievements of Beenhakker’s side. Neither should it be allowed to disguise the fact that in spite of an unprecedented period of preparation time, Eriksson’s England performed abysmally against players of substantially inferior ability and experience.

Makes you wonder what Eriksson, McClaren, Lee and co: have been doing with all the time at their disposal. And when we shall see the results.