I am well gutted but hey, it happens in football.

England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 might prove to be a blessing in disguise. For once there can be no excuses – we can’t blame penalties, we can’t blame bad luck and we can’t blame the referee – England simply were not good enough. They were not good enough on the night and, more importantly, they weren’t up to scratch for the entire qualifying campaign. The disaster means that England must now draw a line under the sorry episode and begin a rebuilding process that focuses on the World Cup in 2010 and the next Euro tournament in 2012. If the side (and I use that word rather than team deliberately) had qualified, it would have papered over the colossal cracks that are there for all to see. The same personnel and manager would have headed off to Austria and Switzerland and the deficiencies would have been overlooked.