So the first game is over for England and it didn't go exactly as planned, there were some poor performances, notably, most of the first half but there were some good points too. I don't just blame Rob Green for last night, yes it was a howler but I still think he is the best option in goal.

While like the rest of the country I responded with a loud Noooo and abuse shouted at the telly as Green scrambled to stop the ball from going in and every schoolboy knows the key is getting your full body behind the ball which obviously green did not. It was a Howler and without it we would likely have won. The truth is though for most of the first half England was easily second best with USA having lots more possession and they deserved their goal.
I don't understand not playing Joe Cole who has the creative spark we need, especially when Milner was taken off on the half hour. I've said before Wright Phillips shouldn't be there, he constantly ran into a cul-de-sac and delivered nothing of real quality for his hour on the field.

If the aim of the world cup was to have more shots (usually into row z) then the other teams we would be a shoe in with Frank Lampard on the field, By far our worst player last night, far too ball greedy and selfish, on at least 3 occasions shunned a better option of passing to a team mate for a speculative shot over the bar. He contributed one shot on target, tamely at Tim Howard the rest of the time he might as well been playing for USA as his passing went to them more often than not.
Terry (and read closely as this doesn't happen often) had a good game and covered nicely at least twice for Carragher who was terrible. I don't like John Terry as a person but he's head and shoulders above all of our other defenders.

"Carra" was very lucky the ref wasn't being strict as his barge into the USA attacker might have on another day given a free kick and earned him a second yellow. He was constantly out of position and i pray he doesn't get another game, while Lampard was our worst player he at least has the potential to get a long range deflected goal, Carra has the potential only to give me a coronary.

King looked ok for his 45 minutes but once again being injured does raise question marks over him being taken.Milner looked nervous and I half wonder if his lack of training this week has left him a little short of full fitness. Ashley Cole unfortunately for England spent too much time defending to be really effective. Cole is great going forward and adds an extra dimension but Donovan did a great job keeping him in his own half for most of the game.
Johnson has a great game one or 2 times he was almost caught out but was a real threat going forward, probably our best player . Lennon showed some real pace and that will terrify some of the teams, had an ok game but his delivery needs a little work.
Gerrard had a decent game and finished his goal very nicely, he tracked back when he needed to but was often out of the game and I'd love to see him (seemingly like the rest of the country) playing just off Rooney.
Rooney had a quiet game for the most part, all too often dropped deep to get the ball and didn't get into the area enough to be a real threat. He did seem to come into the game more as the game progressed and had Heskey squared the ball would have I'm sure made it 2-1.

Heskey had a Jekyll and Hyde performance, while he won a lot of headers and set up gerrard, he was offside far too often and his finishing is about on my level. While we play Heskey it completely removes one member of the team as a goal threat, how he got in the squad i have no idea, there must be 10 better players than him.

There were some positives and some negatives, too often we wre poor and sloppy in posetion but we had chances and put the US under a lot of pressure especially in the last half hour. We now need to beat Slovenia and Algeria by more than the USA do now to win the group to give us a better 2nd round game (in theory anyway) and make sure our games are all at half 7 which will save me and others having to get time off work to watch them.

So there you go my thoughts on last night.

Steve Jarvis