believe me good will come

poor old England…

Doomed manager Sven-Goran Eriksson faces a striker crisis. England expects 20-year-old super freak Wayne Rooney to recover from a broken foot and blast them to glory. He will recover, but won’t have played for six weeks by the time he gets a start in the latter, harder stages of the competition. Left up front is bored prima donna Michael Owen returning from injury and a journeyman, Peter Crouch, on the verge of being found out. The stunning call-up of 17-year-old striker Theo Walcott, who has never played a premiership game and who displaces fit and in-form options, is surely mad Swede Sven-Goran’s revenge on the English. – Listener, 10/06/2006, pp. 27-8.