I often think what a fine balance things rest on, especially in sport. It’s normally when I’m ripping up another worthless betting slip, having got yet another prediction wrong, but events like those of Tuesday night really make me wish I had a bit of foresight sometimes. I bet you would have got really good odds on the game being cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch, especially as the stadium in Poland has a roof. I could be really rich now, if only I’d known.
I can’t sit around feeling sorry for myself for not being able to see into the future though, although I will say that Tuesday night must have been so embarrassing for the Polish football authorities. I’m just glad I didn’t choose to go out and watch that game, as a few mates were talking about doing a few weeks ago. I’m pretty sure I would have stayed on to watch it on Wednesday anyway, as I made sure I cleared the rest of this week of work – one of the benefits of being self employed.
I may not get results predictions right but I was right about one thing – England were unconvincing last night and lucky not to lose in the end. Even when we scored it felt like it was against the run of play and it wasn’t exactly one of Rooney’s best ever finishes – I think it went in off his arm in the end.
Still, we hold on to the hope that we can still qualify for the World Cup 2014 and I guess I should be more positive and look on the bright side. We are top of the group after all and there are still plenty of games to be played. You never know, we might win them all easily. Or we might not.
Here are all of the remaining World Cup 2014 England qualifiers, courtesy of www.goal.com.
You’d be a fool not to be happy with a 5-0 England win, especially considering our performances over the last few years. I was glad to see Rooney get on the score sheet twice as well and you could say we’ve started this World Cup campaign really positively. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a pessimist when it comes to England, however, and I came away from this game against San Marino thinking that we still had to prove ourselves. No disrespect to them but they are a pretty awful team and I would have been thoroughly disappointed if we had conceded a goal to them, or, worse, drawn or lost. Yes, we scored five and we did look more impressive than we have been, but it’s San Marino, you know? It doesn’t really mean anything.
Poland tonight will be a bit of a tougher game and I wouldn’t be surprised to see us revert to type, after all the hot air that follows a 5-0 win. In these situations we tend to get over-confident, relax too much and lose our focus. I hope it doesn’t happen – I am an England fan still – but I just won’t be surprised if it does. It’s not like we have a great record of maintaining form and coming through rough patches. I suspect we’ll struggle a little in the next few games and qualify by the skin of our teeth, as usual.
I don’t want to go into tonight with a negative attitude though so here’s a little reminder of what England can do when we’re playing well.
I’ll stick with my prediction for tonight – a 2-2 draw – but I will secretly be hoping for another 5-0 win.
I think my mate who I went to help look for cars is going to be as hard to please as me. We went out to look at Peugeots but he ended up in another garage nearly buying a Renault Laguna. He didn’t in the end – he’s decided to do what I’m doing and try out as many cars as possible before he makes a decision. I did warn him it might take a while but he doesn’t seem bothered – I think he likes the process of looking at cars as much as I do.
There are two international football games in a row over the next week. We’ve got San Marino at home this Friday night and Poland away next Tuesday. I’m hoping to see some decent football from England. There’s been a lot in the news recently, with Rooney’s return, Ashley Cole’s Twitter comments about the FA and all this stuff with John Terry. I think it’s time the players silenced all the gossipers and showed us all why they are heralded as some of the best players on the planet and played some decent international football for a change. I’m not too hopeful, if I’m honest, because we don’t exactly have a very good track record with this generation, but you never know.
For what it’s worth I will make a couple of predictions anyway. I’m hoping Rooney scores at least a goal in each game and Joe Hart plays as well for England as he did for Man City in the Champions League. Here are my predictions for the scores:
A few weeks ago I was going on about how worried I was that Man United wouldn’t perform in the Champions League this year. We completely bombed out of it last year so it was really important to start well this time and get some wins under our belt. As of tonight, we’ve played two and won two, so that’s pretty good going as far as I’m concerned. And judging by the weekend’s performance in the Premier League, it’s that competition I should be worrying about, not the Champions League.
We were awful in the first half against Tottenham on Saturday, letting them go two up, and although we fought hard in the second half I just didn’t think we had the quality to turn it around. They ended up winning 3-2, which was their first victory at Old Trafford in 23 years. Sir Alex moaned afterwards about the lack of injury time, saying it was an insult and it didn’t give us the proper chance to win the game. As big a fan of Man United as I am I can’t agree with him – even if there is discrepancy in the time keeping, it’s only about 30 seconds or a minute and you can’t say that’s why we didn’t win. We needed to play well for the whole game and we didn’t – that’s why. Plus we all know that if it was the other way round, and we’d beaten them and they were moaning about injury time, Sir Alex would be rubbishing their comments. It’s another example of the stupidity that I don’t like in professional football.
We’re away to Newcastle this Sunday then there are a couple of international fixtures, with England playing World Cup qualifiers against San Marino and Poland. I like a bit of international football to break up the domestic stuff every now and again, and it’ll no doubt be a welcome break for some of the players too. Ferdinand, for example, can put his feet up for a week, as it doesn’t look likely he’ll be called up to play for Roy Hodgson again.
Strangely for me, I actually ended up turning the England football game off last week. I looked at the result afterwards, of course, and was pleased we managed to get a goal back to draw 1-1, but the play in the first half was so uninspiring I just thought to myself, I’ve got better things to be doing than spending another 45 minutes watching this. So I went and did them. I’m sure I’ll get into international football again at some point but right now it’s doing nothing for me.
Man United, on the other hand, smashed Wigan 4-0 on Saturday, which sets us up really nicely for this week’s Champions League game against Galatasary. I will be watching all of that game, of course, although I think I will quickly lose patience with United if they pull last season’s trick of doing really badly in the Champions League. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
I’ve got an average week in the studio this week, which I’m quite grateful for after last week’s workload. There’s a band in at the moment for three days, recording a single (I’m not impressed with them myself but that’s irrelevant I suppose), and I’ve got a morning of voice-over to record on Friday then that’s it for the week. It gives me Thursday off to do a bit of shopping, maybe go and look at a few cars and potentially get over the celebratory beers from Wednesday night’s Champions League victory. See, I am trying to keep in a positive frame of mind.
Oh, and for what it’s worth (which isn’t a lot) here’s my prediction for Wednesday night:
If I was a suspicious person, I might think that all sport is fixed and the results pre-determined, designed to control public mood and create drama. If that was the case, whoever is in charge has done a very good job of making anyone interested in British sport very happy this year. From the amazing end to last season’s Premier League to Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour de France, the Olympics, Van Persie signing for Man United and now Andy Murray finally winning the US Open, you start thinking it can’t get any better and then it does. Lewis Hamilton even won the Italian Grand Prix at the weekend.
Anyway, I am really pleased for Murray. He lost four Grand Slam finals before this and it was looking like he might become a bit of a nearly-man – always close but never able to finish it off. Of course, as a United fan I have to say his victory must have been helped by the visit from Sir Alex Ferguson after he won the semi-final. He is, after all, the best manager in sport.
We’re at home to Wigan this Saturday but there’s an England game on tonight – a World Cup qualifier against Ukraine. I’ll be in the studio until late tonight, tidying up from a band that’s been in there for two days, but I will watch the football to see how we get on. I’m helping out a mate tomorrow morning, towing his car to a Toyota service place after it broke down at the weekend, then I’ve got a really busy week right through to Friday. I’ll definitely be looking forward to the weekend when it comes.
If I was to say I’m surprised about England’s Euro 2012 performance, I’d be lying. I didn’t even feel particularly angry or disappointed watching them lose to Italy on penalties either. We’re just not good enough, it really is as simple as that at the moment and if we’re being honest, we were a little lucky to get through the group stages. I think Sweden were a more worthy team to qualify, but there you go – we did win the group and I suppose you can’t argue with that.
It is frustrating to watch these players, who we see every week in the Premier League, going from confident, skilful footballers to people who don’t seem to have any sense about them on the pitch at all – how many times did Rooney and Young give the ball away in the quarter final against Italy? At times I thought they would have been better with me on the pitch and that’s saying something. Still, like Roy Hodgson says, at least we can take a positive away from the tournament – namely that our fans are loyal and make a lot of noise.
Needless to say that most of my quarter final predictions were way out. I was quite impressed with my call on Germany v Greece though – I said 4-2 to Germany and they won 4-1. Maybe I am getting better. I suppose one good thing about England losing is that we can now watch the remaining three games for pure enjoyment and I might as well lay down some predictions for them too. Here are my Euro 2012 semi final predictions. We’re still on for that Germany v Portugal final I predicted last time – you never know,. I might get something right.
Since I started making predictions on the football, particularly with Euro 2012, I’ve noticed two things – firstly, I never get them right and secondly, more importantly, England seem to be getting better. I’m not particularly superstitious but I think the two might actually be related so I’ve decided to keep going. The Quarter Finals of Euro 2012 start tonight with Czech Republic playing Portugal and this is when the competition really gets going.
The group stages saw half the teams get knocked out so you could say we’re in the top half already but as England seem to keep improving, the more the expectation on them grows. That’s natural I guess but I still think people are generally a little hesitant to get fully behind them – not because they don’t want to support their country but more likely because they simply don’t want to get their hopes up too much, only to have them crushed – again.
So here we go, leading into a very exciting weekend of football, here are my predictions for the Euro 2012 Quarter Finals. If I was you, I wouldn’t place a bet on any of these outcomes.
Thursday 21 June – Czech Republic 2 Portugal 3
Friday 22 June – Germany 4 Greece 1
Saturday 23 June – Spain 2 France 3
Sunday 24 June – England 1 Italy 2 (after extra time)
Going by those, I’d have Germany and Portugal in the final, with Germany (unfortunately) winning it. We’ll see though – I’ll report back next week once we know what actually happened.
I’ve given up pretending that I’m not going to watch much of the football – these final group games have been really exciting and it’s all building up to tonight, with England playing Ukraine at the same time as France play Sweden. It’s been a strange atmosphere here in Manchester, with most people seemingly a little nonplussed by the whole thing. I remember during the World Cup two years ago there were England flags everywhere and there was a real mood of confidence and excitement about the football but that just doesn’t seem to be here this time. Maybe we’ve all been worn out a bit by the Jubilee and everything else. Or maybe we’re finally becoming realistic about our expectations.
Either way I will still, of course, be supporting England tonight and hoping that we can get a good win to go into the quarter finals. If we do go through we’ll play either Spain or Italy, depending on where we come in our group. I watched Spain last night, expecting to see some amazing football, but it felt a little flat if I’m honest. There’s no doubt they’ve got a lot of skill but they seem to just want to walk it into the goal all the time. If you stick to your plan with them and stay really solid at the back, looking to capitalise on a breakaway, you’ve got a chance of beating them – just like Chelsea did over Barcelona in the Champions League.
Anyway, we’ll see. I don’t mind who we play in the quarter finals – I’d just be happy to get through and see some improvement in our overall game. We need a win or a draw with Ukraine to get through, then it just depends on what France do. I’m expecting them to win so if we do get a result we will probably be playing Italy in the next round. Let’s hope Rooney’s return inspires us like everyone is saying it will.
Oh, and for what it’s worth (which isn’t a lot) here are my predictions for tonight’s games:
It probably won’t surprise you that after saying I wasn’t going to watch too much football this week, I’ve done exactly that – it’s just too addictive. I did have a fairly productive couple of a days, going to look at some used cars and doing some recording in the studio. The band got their England song down and are busy making a video, trying to get it out before our game against Sweden tomorrow. They don’t know about this blog so I think I’m fairly safe in saying that it isn’t actually a very good song so I don’t think it will really go anywhere, but they had fun writing and recording it so I guess that’s all that counts. I will keep an eye on it though, just in case it does become massive.
Apart from that my evenings have been spent watching the five o’clock game ‘by accident’ – and when I say that I mean I’ve totally been keeping an eye on the clock and making sure I make my afternoon cup of tea for 5pm, so I can watch the football. When that’s finished it’s only an hour until the second game at 7.45pm – just enough time to cook dinner. I do feel a bit guilty for spending so much time watching football but then again, I enjoy it and it won’t last forever so why not.
I thought Portugal were a little lucky yesterday and I would have liked to see Denmark win it in the end. The last half an hour was really exciting and the Germany v The Netherlands game afterwards was a very similar match. I wanted The Netherlands to win that one too but that group is still all to play for – even The Netherlands, at the bottom on zero points, could still qualify. Exciting stuff for the weekend.
Anyway, I’m sticking with my prediction for the games tomorrow and I’ll definitely be watching both of them, without feeling guilty in the slightest.
