The price is hype

An early goal, not one but two injuries, a horrific goalkeeping blunder, one world class save, some spurned chances to win it and plenty of vuvuzela’s; all in all I think I’m quite happy with that point from Saturday’s World Cup opener against the USA.

While the American front pages celebrate the result as a famous moral victory, much of England’s press have gone from the typical hysteria about winning the competition to changing their minds completely and are now finger pointing and worrying whether we’ll even make the second round.

It was foolish for anyone to think the injuries to Gareth Barry and Rio Ferdinand would not affect the spine of the team in the early stages of the tournament. Without Rio we have no real tried and test partnership at centre back and in the absence of Barry we are missing out on what has formed the basis of a successful midfield during England’s impressive qualifying campaign.

The question has to be whether or not England will get stronger from the lessons learnt in the game or will our form continue to suffer?

You have to hope the former would be true and we will learn valuable lessons from this game and go on to beat Slovenia and Algeria at a comfortable pace. However the fact is that after a successful qualifying campaign there do seem to be a quite a few questions about our plan b now we’ve been hit by one or two injuries in key areas.

With Ledley King’s injury Capello must now decide who is best to partner John Terry at the back. After his sub appearance at the weekend Jamie Carragher looks to be the man next in line in the manager’s mind. However the lack of pace he showed at times is a worry, especially alongside the equally slow Terry.

Matthew Upson covered ably for Terry and Ferdinand in qualifying while the form and pace of Michael Dawson must make his inclusion tempting. Whoever gets the nod I think we may have to accept the mistakes will be made while a new partnership beds in at the back.

How quickly Gareth Barry can recover from his ankle injury is now key to England’s progression in the rounds beyond the group stages. The City man made the bench on Saturday so let’s hope its sooner rather than later before he can slot back in in-front of the back four. If Barry doesn’t make Fridays clash with Algeria, Cappello must consider Michael Carrick for the holding role in order to free up Lampard and Gerrard from their restrictive defensive duties and help protect the likely partnership of Carragher and Terry.

Then there is the goalkeeper. There is little doubt that Robert Green’s blunder will have secured his place in the next game as Capello will not want to destroy the confidence of his chosen number one nor appear to panic. However, David James experience and Joe Hart’s form will continue to raise one or to eyebrows about his selection in the first place. Although I would love to have seen Hart take the jersey, at this stage of all three candidate’s careers I would still have given the shirt to David James.

I would also love to know how Joe Cole never got on the pitch. I was quite surprised he didn’t start the match ahead of James Milner on England’s left but was left shocked that Capello opted for Wright-Phillips ahead of him once the Villa man was replaced. The balance of the side didn’t quite feel right with two pacey wingers against a side like the US. I would have been much more natural to have Cole’s guile and craft on the left to compliment Lennon’s pace from the right. Hopefully that will be something that can be rectified against the Algerians on Friday.

All in all we mustn’t panic after drawing with a decent USA side. The American’s are a hardworking, difficult to beat outfit tinged with quality from the likes of Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. But that result is now gone and we must concentrate on taking maximum points from our remaining two group games against Algeria and Slovenia.

Looking at their game yesterday England should have enough to take maximum points from both of them even whilst still ironing out the creases in Capello’s crumpled squad. And who knows? Two comfortable wins might just get the press and the rest of the country blowing their vuvuzela’s again.