LOSING THE FAITH ... Roo looks to the skies
DRAB, dreary, depressing, disjointed, at times desperate and, overall, dull as ditchwater.
Thanks, England.No wonder you were booed off the pitch by your own fans last night.
And now we have to beat Slovenia in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday to ensure we do not return home as the sick joke of international football.
So much for the glory of the Premier League 'product' and the squillions of pounds sloshing around in it.
So much for the Big Four Champions League heavyweights. And to think that after this crop of players, the cupboard is almost bare.
And we had thought the World Cup had come to life.
Well, you always know who you can rely on to bring things crashing back down to earth.
Steven Gerrard had said it was time to join the party. So England promptly blew out the candles.
On Fabio Capello's 64th birthday.
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now, will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
Probably not.
Yes, they cranked it up for a while in the second half when the Algerians tired but, in the end, they had neither the guile nor ingenuity to get the one goal that would have got them off the hook.
And they wouldn't have deserved it, either.
And to think the day had started so well with the defeat of the Germans.
By the end of it, England were staring down a barrel after a performance that had Capello and everyone else connected with the national team tearing their hair out.
And what has happened to Wayne Rooney?
This was the bloke who was supposed to take the World Cup by the scruff of its neck. Instead, he - like England - is hanging on to its shirt-tails.
A few months ago, Rooney was setting the Premier League ablaze.
Now the fire is out.
It was incredible to watch a player of such talent make so many elementary errors.
And he compounded it all at the end by saying sarcastically to TV as he came off: "It's nice to see your home fans booing you."
Well, what did he expect after another World Cup failure that took us back to 2006 where we stank the place out?
What did he expect from fans who had paid good money to come out to South Africa to follow their team?
Only to be rewarded with this rubbish.
Yet the men around him were not much better. And still no sight of Joe Cole.
Instead, when Aaron Lennon was replaced, we had Shaun Wright-Phillips again.
And when Emile Heskey went, we got Jermain Defoe.
And then Peter Crouch for Gareth Barry.
Cole must have done something seriously wrong we don't know about to upset Capello.
And what gets into Frank Lampard in games like this?
A colossus for Chelsea, he seems to shrink when he puts on an England shirt. And all this against an Algerian side rated a modest 30th in the world.
An Algeria playing their first World Cup since 1986 courtesy of beating Egypt in a play-off.
An Algeria who had gone into the game on the back of a disastrous run in which they had lost five of their six warm-up matches.
An Algeria who, in this spell, had conceded 12 goals and scored just one - a penalty in their only victory, a 1-0 win over UAE.
An Algeria who boasted 'household' names like Rangers' Madjid Bougherra, once of Crewe, and relegated Portsmouth's Nadir Belhadj and Hassan Yebda.
And others from Slavia Sofia, Nacional Madeira, Sochaux, Bochum and Valenciennes.
And an Algeria who shamed the so-called cream of the Premier League.
What are the England fans to make of it all?
They had been warming up all day down at the cafes and bars with vast expectations of what England might do later in the evening.
They had congregated in their thousands round Mitchell's Waterfront Tavern where a huge screen relayed Germany's match with Serbia.
When the Serbians scored, the roar could almost have been heard back in Blighty.
So the 30,000 or so supporters were in full and magnificent voice as they belted out the national anthem.
Throw in the locals who were supporting the Mother Country and no nation has had more fans behind them - twice as many as had made it up north to Rustenburg.
We could have been at Wembley.
Now we just needed the performance to go with it. But it was desperately poor from the outset.
Rooney and Lampard needlessly gave the ball away, David James struggled under a high cross and Glen Johnson miskicked his clearance in the box.
Then Lampard fluffed an attempted through ball to Heskey while a shot from Gerrard (left) spiralled some 15ft over the bar.
It was actually getting worse. And this from a team that are known for strong starts to either half.
As for James, every time the ball went anywhere near him there were anxious intakes of breath.
Algeria were now running large chunks of the game and looking more likely to score.
With nothing coming from the England midfield, Rooney was forcedto come deeper and deeper so further diminishing what little threat there was in front of goal.
The close-ups of the faces of the England fans in the 64,000 crowd told its own story.
It was already looking like being a long night - especially whenever classy Karim Ziani got on the ball.
So we came to half-time with only a 12-yard Lampard shot pounced on by Rais M'Bolhi to briefly raise hopes.
And 55 per cent possession to Algeria.
Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
And it didn't get all that much better after the break.
So now we are left to reflect on the sign on the wall of the Green Point Stadium entrance.
Go strong or go home.
England have one last chance.
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