It is only now as I sit at my desk in mid-May, just three days after the end of the Premier League season, that I realise the full extent of Steve McClaren’s crimes against English football.
What I mean is, no England at the European Championships so an absolute disaster, a catastrophe, a major pain in the backside which has not only humiliated us on the international stage, but has left a gaping hole in my summer.
What a clown that guy was. God, I can still see him looking like a rabbit stuck in the glare of the headlights with that (insert swear word of your choice) umbrella against Croatia!
How on earth did we not qualify? Unbelievable. I’ve slagged off enough footballers in my time, but even that arrogant, pampered, over-rated bunch should have been able to qualify for the finals without too much trouble. Scotland put up a better fight than us!
Some have suggested the failure to qualify was a blessing in disguise because at least it meant we got rid of McClaren, but while I understand their thinking, you have to look at the bigger picture at times like this and the red-faced one with the dodgy comb over would have gone as soon as England were knocked out anyway so it was a win-win situation.
Fail to win and he goes with our bad wishes, win and we’ve finally won a major tournament again and he can have a knighthood!
Without England in Austria and Switzerland there are no cheap drink offers at the supermarkets, no unofficial bank holidays to watch the games on television and none of those plastic St George flags to attach to your banger. Ok, so the latter is probably a blessing in disguise, but I’m even going to miss those tacky little gimmicks.
There are no sticker book collections, there are no mad scrambles for tickets or last minute dashes to Austria to watch a game just because you can. There is no spontaneous drinking session to celebrate an England victory and there are no wild predictions from Gary Neville about how this is our year!
If England had qualified, I would have been on holiday now, cramming in a few days before heading to England’s training camp with the rest of a hungry media pack to wildly build up hope and expectation into a frenzy before writing yet another obituary for English football when we go out on penalties in the quarter-final.
Crikey, a quarter-final defeat would seem like a blessing wouldn’t it now we’re sat at home, twiddling our thumbs?
Oh I’m sure the rest of you out there are busy wondering who’s going to sign who before the start of next season, but you know deep down that nothing much is going to happen until the rest of Europe has stopped playing the Euros.
So, yeah, thanks Steve, good effort. Oh no pal, nobody blames you! The best bit is, he’s still so full of himself that he believes it is only a matter of time before he comes swaggering back into the Premier League as a manager. Erm, yeah, ok Steve, you keep telling yourself that.
It would be a very brave or foolish chairman who announced to the club’s supporters that, after much deliberation, the board has decided to appoint Steve McClaren as manager. The only sound you’d hear would be the tearing up of season tickets!
I reckon Big Sam Allardyce has got a better chance of returning to the Premier League and his reputation is hardly sky-high after a dismal six months at Newcastle.
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