British Expatriate Network

My wife's comments sum up the pointless hysteria cooked up by some people on a drab result against a drab team.

"So if we have an entire team injured, we will lose 1-2 to Belarus? Boo hoo!"

In other words, add the first choice players or upgrade the rehab players to full fitness and I think we'll do just fine.

With players coming off the bench like Lennon, Walcott and - once Rooney gets fit - Crouch, with a reliable defender like Carragher, a fits anywhere in a decent team player like Hargreaves (although I didn't like his right-back performance), I think we'll do fine. I just hope Carson gets a run-out before the World Cup just to show what he can do, all he did last night was pick the ball out of the net.

Some people are forgetting that was a B team out there. Maybe they should have all played with 12-22 on their backs to remind people of that fact.

Yeah, I was thinking "So what?"

Football snobbery rears its head once more - apparently, simply because the term 'England' appears, amongst the 'B Team' part, they must crush all before them, regardless of who is available, fit, injured etc.

Roll on the real deal in a few weeks...

Exactly my thoughts....as the commentaters said how embarrasing for England, I was thinking Sven doesn't give a toss about the result, just wanted to see the players in action.

When has Sven cared about winning a friendly? Has he ever won one?

Pah - football commentators these days are like 24 hour cable news - it always has to be controversy. Take the FA Cup final - for a day and a half afterwards Radio 5 and TalkSport had phone in shows as to whether Stevie Gerrard did a Nazi salute. Utterly ridiuclous but it fills space.

I watched tyhe Venezuela/USA game yesterday and was pissed at the commentary team, big voices, big opinions, lots of words, little content, "USA is trying to mount an attack". You stupid bleep, I can see they're mounting a bleeping attack, just give me the bleeping names.

Like all pundits, never a doubt, often wrong.

Oh for the days when the commentators understood that they were there to aid in our enjoyment of the game, not to compete with it.

That's why I enjoy listening to TMS - been hooked to the England - Sri Lanka commentary on Five Live Extra the last few days. Actually I prefer audio commentary to TV commentary hands down. The only problem is, if you can get both, the TV is probably on a boob delay so you hear the goal before you see it.