Offside Ref

Macedonia is the kind of place that if you can get away from with the 3 points it’s enough.  I said it wouldn’t be pretty and it wasn’t. I said there wouldn’t be many goals and there weren’t. I also said England would be solid and on a few occasions they were found wanting.

Ultimately these are the games you need to win, when you don’t play well and you have a hostile crowd, I think any other team in the group if offered a 1-nil win would take it since Macedonia will take points off some teams in Skopje. I think in England’s next game, again against Macedonia, we will see England take the fight to them a bit more since it’s a home game.

Three games, three wins and ten goals, results count so anyone who is going to moan about McClaren has serious problems.  My biggest worry is Lampard who for large periods of the game was anonymous; it was the same in the game against Andorra where I totally forgot he was even playing.

So England lead Group E on 6 points with the real danger teams in the group, Croatia and Russia having a game in hand over England.

With England’s first competitive game against the minnows Andorra out of the way, the side face the possible stumbling block that is Macedonia.  While they are unlikely to win they have proven in the past that they can take points. Should that happen McClaren’s honeymoon will be over.

Being an away game with a hostile crowd England won’t want to push to far up or take to many chances but I full expect them to put in a solid performance that takes all 3 points, just don’t expect it to be overly pretty or with tons of goals.

For quite some time now we have seen players waving imaginary cards around and asking for the opposition to be booked. I despise this act and think if the player wants to be making the decision that bad he should quit being a player and become a ref. 

I’ve said for sometime that I’d like this act to be cracked down upon but no one appeared to be doing anything about it. Step forward UEFA just before the latest round of Euro 2008 qualifiers and issue a directive saying that and player asking for another to be cautioned should themselves be cautioned.

EUFA also wanting to crack down dissent have said that at least one player should be booked if a group surround a referee.  I also agree with this and can only hope that the directives filter down into the leagues and up to FIFA.