OUR BOYS AND THE WORLD CUP

The England based shenanigans of this international break have been about as interesting as watching Dannii Minogue read the Lisbon Treaty. However the good news is that my personal dream is still alive: A World Cup final against Maradonna's Argentina in which Becks becomes England's most capped player and gets the assist for Rooney's 92nd minute winner - a bundled effort which television replays show to be a blatant handball. "Forty years of hurt" wiped away in an instant. Put your money on it now!

There are a few bits and bobs of news involving our boys, so here's a summary in case you missed it and/or can't be arsed to research it yourself:

• Croatia are out. From a selfish perspective this is triffic news. Modders stays out of the shop window, all 3 of our boys get to have a nice long holiday and there's one less team capable of beating us at next year's tournament.
• Crouchy is on fire. His first goal last night was hailed, rather comically, as an "incredible finish" by one over enthusiastic commentator. However you see it though, he's looking like good business at £9m. For me he has to go to South Africa. Is by far the best of the "other options" but probably doesn't have the rumble bumble of Heskey/Cole - and Capello likes a bit of rumble bumble.
  
• Lennon got subbed. You'd have to have been stuck on Uranus to not know he's in the form of his life, so no surprise here. The wily Italian obviously knows what he can do. I'm glad he came off and I'm certain he'll be on the plane next summer.
• Defoe got rested. Don't know what's going on with his hand, I can only imagine his exclusion was by mutual consent, but not playing last night will be good news come Saturday as he will unleash hell on his old club.
  
• Honduras got through. Which, assuming they don't get drawn in our group, gives us a splendid underdog to root for during the group stages - bless them.
• Pav is nervy. He only got half an hour against Germany at the weekend, but didn't even make the bench for Azerbywhatsit last night. Can't see him being too happy about that. He'll want to leave and I for one don't blame him. "You need 4 good strikers" is a load of old cobblers that came out of Man U winning the lot with Cole/York/Sherry and Solskjaer. None of the current top 4 have 4 top strikers so how we ever planned to keep that many happy is a mystery to me. It has to be 3 and a kid.
  
• Bobby K shouted and pointed his way the play-offs. Standard.
• Bassong went all the way to Cameroon to sit on the bench. He could still miss out if country-I've-never-heard-of Gabon beat Togo, and the Macaroons slip up against bottom side and perennial ball hoggers Morocco. Those fixtures seem to have been postponed.

So there you have it, put that info away in a box and forget about it until Christmas when the draw happens. We have bigger fish to fry - starting with a stinky old trout on the South Coast this weekend.

I predict a rout.