England's Chances All But Extinguished

I wrote earlier about reasons to be positive about England heading into their 2nd group game with Uruguay.

There are no longer reasons to be positive.

England delivered a woeful performance that would have left a lot of Sunday League teams embarrassed.

They played with none of the attacking flow that gave them such optimistic reviews in their opening game defeat against Italy.

Uruguay were the better team from the word go.

The Three, very tame, Lions have no-one to blame but themselves.

The defensive frailties that were evident in that first game were exposed once more against Uruguay but with none of the attacking enthusiasm of the first game to counter balance it.

Against Italy we looked shaky at the back but we defended that in the best way we could, by brute attacking strength.

Tonight we played like a team without a cause, with none of the fighting spirit or verve of the opening encounter with the Azzuri.

So what went wrong?

For a long time I've defended Roy Hodgson and his tactics, my staunch defence of him crumbled tonight much like England's defensive and attacking efforts.

One could argue that it was Luis Suarez's insatiable talent that condemned England to defeat this evening but that person would be missing the overall picture.

Of course Suarez's influence on the game was massive but I still think England would have lost even if he had not played.

That, in itself, illustrates how poor England were tonight.

If we had played with the style and panache that we had against Italy I see no reason why we could not have dispatched of the Uruguayan side with ease.

Luis Suarez or no Luis Suarez.

But we did not.

For some reason, and I can only attribute this to Hodgson's tactics and team talk, we played very conservatively.

Thus eliminating the strength we had in the opening group game and putting pressure on the weakness from that game - our defence.

Defensively we were once again poor but that was to be expected, what was so disappointing was the lack of attacking dynamism that we displayed so proudly in the first game.

That was missing tonight.

But the thing we missed most was the commitment, spirit and fight of the first game.

In the opener we never seemed to give up but tonight, barring the five minute spell that followed Rooney's goal, we seemed in admittance to the inevitable defeat.

I've always said that if a team loses I can accept it, as long as they gave it their all.

Against Italy I could say that.

Tonight I could not.

England emerge from yet another major competition with their tails firmly tucked between our legs.

Something needs to be done to combat the inevitable crushing defeat of the national team at every major occasion.

And it needs to be done soon.