MuskratUps and Downs Just +1 this and resign yourself to the fact that the reason Premiership Football is so successful, will forever mean that out National team will forever fail.
S'right. As evidenced by the fact that we never qualified at all in 1974 and 1978 and didn't have to qualify in 1970 as we were the holders or 1966 as we were the hosts.
Winning in 1966 was perhaps the worst thing that happened to English football.
If we'd failed then we might have taken a long hard look at how we run football in this country. Instead it let a whole generation believe that English football is the best in the world, and the English way of doing things is best.
We pretty much got away with if for another 30 years because teams outside the established nations were crap, and beating the likes of the USA and Slovenia was a piece of piss. The whole middle order of world football has stepped up a gear since then though, and they are probably now as near to us as we are to the genuine challengers.