It comes round again.

The bewildering inability of an England football team to field a midfield group of players able to tackle hard and/or trap and control and pass the ball with high accuracy/speed almost every time. This time with added goal-keeping cluelessness.

The effect is ingeniously to organise the team so that our best player, Rooney, scarcely gets a single good pass in a dangerous position.

Instead we fall back on the time-honoured ploy of heaving it into the penalty area hoping that someone taller than the defenders will connect with the ball in a helpful way.

Argentina, Spain and Brazil with all their buzzing midfield energy and skill will have us for breakfast, if we somehow scrape through to play them.

Sigh. On to 2014.