Thank God it's over!

England's footballers well and truly shot themselves in the foot again and finally put us out of our misery by making an early exit from Euro 2000.

The thought of dear old St George embarrassing himself further by stumbling and spluttering into certain quarter-final defeat at the hands of the unpredictable Italians would have been unbearable.

And looking back over England's comic capers against Portugal, Germany and Romania, I thought I was watching Colchester United again.

Defensively naive and leaking goals like a sieve... it was all so familiar.

England would have been better off with the Chuckle Brothers in defence rather than the Neville brothers; the team was static and uninventive in midfield, while only the strikers came out of the tournament with any credit.

To have scored five goals from only scraps - two each against Portugal and Romania - and to have actually been in front in both of those matches, Shearer, Beckham, Scholes and Owen surely deserved a better fate than an early trip home.

How our game cried out for a Gazza-type character to instil fear in our opponents' hearts!

Fan that I am of honest England boss Kevin Keegan, the same tactical naivety that cost him a Premiership title as manager of Newcastle was once again clear for all to see.

England's deficiencies were glaringly evident from the moment we surrendered the two-goal lead in the opening game against Portugal, but sadly Keegan and Co had no idea how to rectify the problems.

Former Dutch ace Johan Cruyff pinpointed our problems from the first kick-off - a lack of technique.

Sadly the entire England squad, Beckham, Scholes and Owen apart, lacked any semblance of such ability.

To win football matches you must have good technique and more importantly possession of the ball as the class teams in the tournament are readily demonstrating.

All England had to offer was passion and spirit in abundance, but with the ever growing number of highly paid foreign stars currently turning out in the Premiership can we really expect anything better?

But take heart - it could be worse. Just imagine waking up in Germany this morning!

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.