Hodgson not out

So who watched the England v Costa Rica bore draw tonight in the World Cup and felt like I did?

Since we lost to the fatally flawed, it seems, genius of Suarez (Uruguay were nothing special), I have felt ever so slightly spaced-out.  Our early exit, which I had been expecting, still left me in slight shock.

So I sat down to watch the final irrelevant chapter in our World Cup short story in a state of near apathy and disdain.

A game was going on but it didn't seem to have anything that was relevant to me.

I am not bothered about the result tonight or even the performance. How on earth could anyone expect this notch-potch of a 'team', selected by a man who must be in serious shock, as opposed to my far less serious shock, to suddenly 'gel' and play like world beaters? Never going to happen.

We did learn a few things, or maybe we just remembered them?

Smalling is not an international footballer, Lampard used to be a very good one. Shaw looks a great prospect, Milner works hard. And Sturridge is as good as we have as a striker but a Messi, a Moller, a Neymar, a Suarez he ain't.  Give the man four or five chances and he is capable of missing the lot.

I could go on.  Maybe I will.

I am at a loss why Roy Hodgson picked a team like that.  He's an experienced man, a top coach and he has a vision of how football should look like.  But tonight he goes and makes so many changes, the team are literally strangers to each other.  And boy, did it look like it!

Whatever Roy said, that was a selection born of sentiment and experiment.

The selection of Lampard was a nice way to say farewell to a declining but very underrated player, as was the late substitution of Gerrard to play where Hodgson himself declared, on the basis of his previous selections, incapable of playing.

Rooney, the media and public hate figure, I could almost understand coming on late on, but I would have understood it more if he had started.

So where do I stand on Roy Hodgson and who cares?

Yesterday, when all my troubles seemed so far away, I was four square behind him, but tonight I am wondering why.

Odd selections, tactics that left me baffled and looked like they baffled our team too and a game plan that didn't look like any kind of plan at all.

What a mess.

Hodgson's appointment surprised many people who expected 'Arry to get the job.  The people's choice, as The Sun might have it.

'Arry would never more than a sticking plaster appointment, one to to lift those who feel her is as great a manager as he thinks he is, but there would be no vision beneath the national team to address the mess that's underneath it.

Whatever Hodgson got wrong - and I think he got a lot wrong - he still knows more than me about football by quite a lot.

I'm not sure how much Hodgson messed up and how much the players messed up.  But they did and it was quite a lot.

It's been a great World Cup so far and we've seen the best (Suarez) and the worst (Suarez).

Somewhere between the best and the worst, and much nearer the latter than the former, there's us.

Hodgson in, but I am no longer sure why.