Fickle media and fans make me so mad

2:58pm Thursday 18th September 2008

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Paul Heckingbottom column: I’m going to have a rant this week about the “joke” coverage of the England team.

There’s no perspective when it comes to the national team, whether it’s the media or the fans.

England were said to be the worst team ever before a ball had even been kicked. People were looking at the team and questioning why Walcott was in when they should have been playing Bentley.

We were listening to the first half of the Andorra game on the radio on the way back from Port Vale and it was exactly the same.

I saw the second half and Andorra just had 11 men behind the ball. If Joe Cole hadn’t scored with virtually the first kick, it would have been a really tough job to break them down.

You could see Andorra were trying to wind people up and frustrate them all the time. They were saying little things as they ran past the England players, who did well to keep a cool head and not to react.

Winning 2-0 away from home was a good result, especially when you see how some of the other bigger nations got on that night. France got beaten by Austria, Italy sneaked it 2-1 against Cyprus and Germany only drew with Finland but nobody seems to mention them.

The build-up to the Croatia game was all about England being poor and Fabio Capello being under pressure. Then we get a great result and all of a sudden England are going to win the World Cup. It’s a joke.

Having slagged off Walcott, he’s suddenly all over the papers and in the TV with his girlfriend and he’s the best player ever.

It’s almost as if, because they know that everyone is interested in England, they have to go over the top all the time.

The ex-players and pundits are at it as well. People like Mark Lawrenson on the BBC just sound so negative all the time.

England are top of the group with two wins but some people are never happy. It’s as if they can’t wait for something to moan about.