But the Question now, of who should keep goal against Algeria, is thrown into everyone's minds. Often when a player makes a mistake a manager should show their faith in them by continuing to select them and support them through a tricky patch, otherwise the player can degrade completely into a twitching bag of nerves. Capello, should not, and I expect he will not, do this for Green; this is not a league campaign, it is a world cup, there is no more room for error and unless we manage to injure both David James and Joe Hart, we will not need Green again this tournament. As for him returning to his club a mess, I couldn't give a sun dried poodle shit is he struggles at West Ham next season - in fact I'd quite enjoy it.
That's it settled then. Drop Green. That leaves us with David James and Joe Hart. Calamity James or the man that's impressed the Premier League this season. I'm going to have to go with James. When you've just had a Keeper with little experience at international level or in big games screw up so spectacularly it would be unwise to replace his with someone younger, less experienced and perhaps just as shaken as Green. David James, at 39 years of age, has played 50 games for his country and in a career spanning 822 first team games, has played in cup finals, European competitions and made a myriad of amusing errors. The important thing is that he has learned how to recover from these errors and has the experience to stabilise the back five.
But although the goalkeeper is the most talked about problem with the England team last night, it is not the most pressing. Capello will be asking today how Rooney, the advertised talisman and messiah, managed to disappear for much of the game, how England can become more clinical infront of goal, how his team will manage without any pace between his centrebacks and how he managed to make such ineffectual substitutions.
The one positive England can take from the game is this man - Stevie G.
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