In case you were in any doubt England are out of the 2014 Rio World Cup, eliminated after two lost football games in Group D. Following their third and final match on Tuesday they will be heading back to Blighty, doubtless to a non-hero’s welcome, after our worst performance EVER at the Finals!.

Yesterday the Chief Football Writer for the Daily Mirror (with a national readership of about a million) wrote an article claiming that win or lose last night England were on the right road and Roy Hodgson was wonderful and “has delivered”. He certainly has – but what it is, is a dog’s dinner. Was this piece a blatant attempt to ingratiate himself with the FA? Or just sheer assessment incompetence and by someone devoid of real insight? My wife knows nothing about football and cares even less, but she is thinking of going for a sports writer’s job at the Mirror.

It is true that Hodgson was absolutely the right man for the FA – he is a big time experienced loser and the buffoons running the show always appoint a loser, to the chagrin of the English football public.

Hodgson has had two years to develop, train, and select a squad to deliver a winning team, and by any measure he has failed miserably, hasn’t he? He led us to failure at Euro 2012 having just taken over from another loser, an Italian, who with his pockets stuffed full suddenly absconded. The pundits lauded him for ‘courage’ in his squad selection for Rio, when he chose youth and inexperience over maturity and familiarity – we dummies though called it ‘stupidity’ but we expected that from him didn’t we?

Last night for this, do or die ‘winnable’ match against Uruguay; he selected Rooney to play in the critical number 10 striker role instead of better contenders, because that is where the lad himself preferred to play, whereas our (the public’s) preferred role for him was on the bench! Wayne is not so much a ‘spent force’ these days as ‘never has been a force, on the World stage has he?

Roy, the England manager no less, couldn’t see what the rest of us all could see as clear as day, that his team selection was NOT working on the night, and disaster loomed. No, he didn’t budge did he, but he doggedly stuck with it, wouldn’t admit the error of his ways, or hear our screaming at the tele, to make the obvious changes. So surely, as night follows day, we lost. The English footballing public are again in despair and burning our flags – but does Hodgson care? Of course not; he is already mega rich from years of successful failure, and has on top of his £3M annual wage, raked in another million pounds bonus for the team luckily getting to Rio; he will be allowed to come home, carry on regardless, and lead us into another failure at the Europeans in a couple of years time (only then will he get the sack, so that the FA can appoint yet another loser at enormous expense to take us forward to the next set of disasters). Well, perhaps then the players will care? Don’t bank on it, they can fall back on their massive undeserved wages (Rooney for instance on £300,000 a WEEK) and adoring Club fans who don’t give a hoot for our National team.

England never looked like winning their first match against Italy, themselves merely a mediocre side and possibly heading now for their own demise, having just lost to Costa Rica, a team who have taken this competition by storm. Against Uruguay there was no fire and passion from the England side – only the historic lack of ball control, poor finishing, and blundering in defence (with the likes of ‘nice personality’ challenged but great world class left back Ashley Cole, not there in the team but abandoned at home after over a hundred England caps). When we lose the final match against Costa Rica, as we might well, there will be no heads bowed in shame, only the explanation that it didn’t matter enough to win – no pride left unfortunately.

[The English are good losers – we get a lot of practice you see]