WHY SAY ANYTHING?

It doesn’t really matter whether England finish third or fourth. For them, the World Cup is over. FIFA prolonging their stay in Russia is more like a punishment rather than any prestigious ending to the competition.

On the positive side, the game on Saturday gives England’s reserves a chance for some revenge on Belgium’s reserves for the 1-0 beating they handed out in the group stage. On the negative side, nobody cares.

The result of that game, which decided who won the group and who finished second, was the biggest mistake made by the two teams. Had they contrived to let England win the group then the team would probably have lost in the quarter-final to Brazil.

That being the case, they would have returned home having achieved exactly what they wanted and with the nation still behind them because, after all, they had lost to BRAZIL. No shame there.

Belgium would probably have reached the final as they would be expected to beat a team ranked 20th in the world, which is where Croatia are at present, in the semi-final.

So the group stage is really where it went wrong and the goal which prevented Belgium reaching the final wasn’t the one scored by Samuel Umtiti for France, it was the one scored by Adnan Januzaj against England which meant that Belgium won their group.

Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge now and people in England, particularly some ex-footballers who really should know better, are waxing lyrical about how well this team performed and what a good manager Gareth Southgate is.

Well guys, we have news for you. This may come as a shock but we still don’t believe that England beating two teams ranked well below them in the world is a particularly stunning achievement. A better achievement was Croatia beating a team, (England), ranked eight places above them!

Throughout their stay in Russia England benefitted from a favourable draw which made them appear to be better than they really are. Still they only managed to beat Colombia on penalties! They then scraped past Sweden before losing, after extra time, to Croatia.

A good England team, given this draw. would have made it to the final with relative ease.

So they will return home ruing a chance wasted. The “what ifs” and the “if onlys” will haunt the players for a week or two after they get back. Then the Premier League season will start and all this nonsense will be forgotten.

International breaks, when interrupting the EPL season, will be cursed again by supporters and the England team will, by the time of the first one, have lost the interest of the masses again.

The problem with this team at this World Cup has been reasonably easy to deduce. Not only are England not a very good team, they are also not a very lucky one. When added together, these two factors make winning the World Cup as distant a dream now as it has been for the last 52 years.

And finally…..

Willian doesn’t really want to leave Chelsea. In fact, now that his nemesis has been sacked, he may not have to.

He is a player with which the Manchester United supporting side of us has had a problem in the last few years.

Yes, we would love to see him playing regularly at Old Trafford BUT;

He has to WANT to play for United. He has expressed no desire to move to the club in the past and even when his future looked very uncertain, he still didn’t have anything positive to say.

He is welcome at Old Trafford if he wants to be there, not because he wants to leave Chelsea having fallen out with the manager. If that is the case then he is welcome to go to Barcelona.

By the way, with the exception of the bit about Barcelona, as that would be very unlikely, exactly the same can be said about Gareth Bale.

We are fed up with Ed Woodward or José Mourinho or both of them wasting time on ageing players who don’t want to play for United. It isn’t as if there are no younger alternatives who would cost less, it just means that the scouts would have to do a little work.

There, rant over.