WHY SAY ANYTHING?

So, thanks to a World Cup campaign which saw England drawn in a very easy group, (Belgium apart but two nations qualified anyway), saw them beat Tunisia, Panama, Colombia and Sweden before finally succumbing to yet another team BELOW them in the world rankings, Croatia, in the semi-finals, the team have risen to a lofty sixth place in the current standings.

This is mainly due to the rest of the world, with the exception of France and Croatia, suddenly forgetting how to play the beautiful game and becoming pretty average in the process.

Just for the record, and despite the way FIFA reaches these strange conclusions, England is not the sixth best footballing nation on earth.

There are two teams who didn’t even qualify for the World Cup who would beat England on a regular basis and those are Italy and Holland.

Does anyone really think that, over a couple of games or even a couple of years, Gareth Southgate’s team would prove to be consistently better than Argentina, Germany or Spain, for example?

They had two opportunities to beat Belgium in the summer. One was to decide the winners of the group which, in truth, neither should have wanted so Belgium put out a very much second choice eleven and still won.

In the play-off for third/fourth place, they played their best available side and won again! So two games against top quality opposition for England and what was the result? Two losses!

So basically, what has happened is that England have stood still and nearly everybody else has slipped down below them. So it shows that, if they can at least remain static, some of the rest will get worse and create the illusion that England is a good team.

Meanwhile, in Manchester…..

Poor little Kevin De Bruyne. After having a decent World Cup followed by a short, but no doubt also decent, holiday, he has only gone and done his knee in.

Manchester City aren’t telling anybody what the extent of the damage actually is because, and this is the bit we find hard to believe, they don’t appear to know.

First guesses are that he will be out for around three months because the injury is actually likely to be ligament damage but, as we said, nobody appears to know.

Whoever treated the Belgian decided it was serious enough to need heavy strapping and he also required crutches when attending the premiere of the club’s new documentary, “All or Nothing”, at The Printworks in Manchester.

Still, as Kyle Walker pointed out, City are not exactly short of talented midfielders so rival teams expecting this setback to seriously weaken the champions will be sadly disappointed. Bear in mind they beat both Chelsea and Arsenal in London and with ease and De Bruyne played for about 20 minutes out of the 180!

And finally…..

According to somebody, we’re not sure who, Manchester United pulled out of a deal for Barcelona’s Colombian international and sometime Eiffel Tower impersonator, Yerry Mina because of the demands of his agent.

They then accused Everton of caving in to those same demands when signing him. Everton, or to be more accurate, Marcel Brands, has refuted claims that he paid the agent more than was necessary whilst, almost in the same sentence, admitting that the club overpaid for Richarlison.

United’s concern was that Everton were making the transfer market look disjointed by paying enormous fees to an agent. This is from the club who broke the world transfer record when buying Paul Pogba from Juventus, to whom they had practically given the same player for free only three years before! How much do you think they paid Mina Raiola for that one?

As far as the Richarlison transfer went there appears to have been some compensation involved due to the way Marco Silva had been “unsettled” by Everton whilst still manager of Watford.

If Everton ever want to be a top six club and rub shoulders with the big boys they need to rid themselves of this sympathetic outlook.

Can you imagine any of the current big six agreeing to pay over-the-odds for a player because they felt guilty about a previous disagreement?

Oh yeah, maybe Liverpool when buying Virgil van Dijk.

What is it about football clubs in Liverpool?