Theo-nly way to play

So that’s 2 matches and 2 wins in the 2010 World Cup qualifying stages for England. And more than the win against Andorra on Saturday, last night against Croatia was done with some style. England, for the first time in a long time, played flowing, passing football. They forced Croatia to do all of the running and chasing of the ball. England were patient, confident, and pressed Croatia into making mistakes which led to openings for attacks.

It was a good evening to be an England fan. From David James in goal, through to Rooney up front, everyone made a contribution (although admittedly one of James’ contributions was to body check a Croatian player outside the box – he was lucky not to get booked for that). The undoubted star of the show though was Theo Walcott. His first senior goal for England started the journey to victory, and were followed by his second and third in the second half which put the result beyond doubt. By the time Walcott’s second goal was making the net ripple, Croatia were down to 10 men after what can only be described as an assault by Kovac on Joe Cole. The Croatian jumped and led with a vicious elbow which left a wound of around 5 inches on the head of Cole. Kovac took an early bath for that challenge.

And to be honest it was a night of poor challenges, niggles and some outstanding play-acting from the Croatians. If they’d spent more time trying to play and less time rolling round like a Serbian sniper had shot them they may have been less humiliated on the pitch. They might also still have the unbeaten home record that they had 24 hours ago. For a team that has not lost any home competitive match in their history, it was a tame performance to try and preserve that record last night.

So with a good 4-1 behind us yesterday, and a 2-0 win on Saturday England are sitting pretty at the top of their qualifying group. The smiles are back on the faces of the England players and fans. There is a general feel good attitude again. Now all we need to do is keep the momentum going in the next game against Belarus by putting in the kind of performance that saw us coast past Slaven Bilic’s team last night…