England vs USA World Cup Results: Poor Management Costs England a Victory

Good morning/afternoon from a sunny Dublin. My latte and croissant has helped me to put last night's beer or two behind me so I can now look forward to another day of World Cup action.

I have to say that I enjoyed yesterday's games and as the days go by I'm becoming more and more interested in the World Cup.

I didn't see too much of the South Korean victory over Greece, but from what I did see South Korea deserved their victory and Greece have very little to look forward to in their next two games.

After that it was Argentina, who beat Nigeria 1-0, but it could have been more if Nigreria's goalkeeper was not in such good form. I wasn't overly impressed with Argentina either, and some of the choices of Maradonna are curious to say the least.

If they line up with Guttierrez at right back against a good team they will be made to pay dearly I'm sure.

The highlight of the day for me was the England match against the USA and I decided to sit on the fence for this one as I have so many friends on Twitter who are supporters of both teams.

I had a night out planned which involved a trip to a pub a few miles away for a draw in which I had bought a ticket for €100. I was told that Ronnie Whelan would be there as well and looked forward to meeting the ex-Liverpool and Ireland player. As it worked out, I didn't see Ronnie but I did get to lift the European Cup and get my photo taken with it, which was a great moment for me.

The plan was to watch the first half at home with a couple of beers and get a lift to the pub to watch the second half and it worked out perfectly.

When I saw the team that England had picked I was a little surprised that they decided to play Heskey and go with the long-ball game.

Things couldn't have got off to a better start for England as Gerrard played a one-two with Heskey and put England 1-0 up in only the fourth minute. I missed the goal as I was ironing a shirt at the time, but apparently most of England missed it too as ITV's coverage wasn't quite up to the standard that you would expect and the screens went blank as the goal went in.

As the first half progressed I remarked to my son that England were giving the States far too much time in front of their back four and the lack of a proper defensive midfielder could cost them dearly.

As it turned out what really cost them dearly was the lack of a proper goalkeeper when a speculative shot from Dempsey was inexplicably helped into the goal by Green. It was a truly dreadful mistake, but he did atone for it when he managed to get a hand to a shot in the second half and touch the ball onto the post to keep the scores level.

For me the Gerrard and Lampard axis in midfield has never worked for England and I see them both as attacking and goalscoring midfielders.

Neither of them can play the defensive role properly and neither of them are midfield playmakers, which means that Capello was simply bypassing them by encouraging his team to play it long to Heskey. It doesn't make for pretty football and I don't think England can win the World Cup playing like that. If they are to have a chance he will have to rethink his player choices and tactics.

The best thing to come out of the game, in my opinion, was the performance of Robert Green as it should now stop Arsenal fans from calling for us to sign him.

His mistake was of Fabianski proportions and we already have two goalkeepers who are as poor as he is. He saved the lowest percentage of shots of any goalkeeper in the Premier League last season, with our keepers running him close for that honour, and we don't need him in our team.

Today's games don't exactly have the makings of classics for me as Algeria play Slovenia in England's group and then Serbia play Ghana and Germany play Australia in group D. It will be interesting to see how those four teams play as they are all capable of doing well in what is a difficult group.

In Arsenal, the Mirror has reported that we have released Gallas because we failed to reach an agreement with him on a new contract. It comes as no real surprise as it has been clear for a long time that he was asking for more money than we are prepared to give him.

It does seem that the other clubs that he has talked to have agreed with our valuation of his services as no other team has been prepared to offer him the money that he thinks his services deserve. It does mean that the Arsenal contingent at the World Cup is now reduced to nine players, but I think that is about as low as it will go.

There is some more talk of Arsenal looking to sign Jagielka from Everton as there was yesterday and after the boss praised Piennar, he's another player we are apparently interested in.

With the boss working at the World Cup it would seem that any player that he gives a positive opinion on will be linked with Arsenal, so we can expect quite a lot of transfer rumours over the next four weeks. I'm not sure that there will be any transfer activity involving any players at the World Cup until the players involved are at least eliminated from the competition.

Tomorrow we can look forward to our first sight of RVP, Bendtner, and Song at the World Cup, although it would seem that two of them may not be playing. The rumours are that Bendtner is injured and Song will be warming the bench for Cameroon, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow.

In World Cup fantasy football, the early leader of my league is The Action One as he has amassed 46 points so far and that leaves 37 ahead of me as I languish in 69th place (no jokes please).

There is a long way to go and only three of my players have actually played so far, but they have done very little between them. When Spain, Brazil, and The Netherlands kick off their campaigns I think I'll have a better idea of how my team will perform. That's it for today.

Here's a look at Green's terrible mistake for England last night.

See You Tomorrow.