Eng-ger-land

England won 4-0....whao...lets party..actually lets not...while I am a big England fan and want to celebrate I think we need to put this victory into perspective...

While we should celebrate the win we shouldn't get carried away. We were only playing Northern Ireland... who only had four Premiership players..England on the other hand had two Galacticos and Nine premiership players. With the exception of Paul Robinson all have see Champions League action, while many of NI's squad are battling for position in the Coca-Cola Championship.

We were held to nil-nil for over 45 minutes, when with the strength in depth we have we should have been at least three goals up at half time! England lacked killer instinct and finishing in the last third! I would put this down to Owen's lack of appearances for Madrid. Even the commentators were saying that nil-nil at half time was a great result for NI.

On the plus side we did have some great team work, made few mistakes and late on had a few more glorious changes to completly annhialate NI.

The second half performance was electrifying to say the least, but at home against a team like NI we should have taken them apart from the start.

When England did get onto the score sheet it was through the individual brilliance of Joe Cole. This led to NI's heads going down and the flood gates opening. Even then of the next three goals one was a wicked deflection and the other an own goal!

Cole, Rooney, Lampard turned in brilliant performances.

I was cheering each goal as they went in though.

Let see how we do against Azerbaijan (who were beaten 8-0 by Poland on the same day).

I think the result overall was good and the performance ok, we should celebrate the victory but not get two carried away. On paper we are the best team in the group and automatic qualification is still to be expected. I think as always England always save their best performances for the finals of major tournaments and then snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Sorry if I sound like a pessimist, I am an England fan and would love to see them win but my expectations (based on past failures) are only that we'll qualify for the world cup, get through the group stages and then get knocked out after failing to meet our potential.