Fabio's Sinking Ship

So Paul Robinson has pulled out of the England squad - he doesn't see himself as a number 3 or 4 keeper so he's retired from international football. Oh no!!! First Wayne Bridge the imaginary cuckold, then Emile Heskey the imaginary centre-forward, and now the Bloke Who Mistook a Molehill for a Football!

How the fook will we cope? Happy retirement, Paul. Maybe you'll even get a tinpot handshake from the golden shower generation.


Quick men! Swim back to your clubs!

But wait!!! Wes Brown, too?! The versatile defender (code for never very convincing anywhere, cf Joleon Lescott) has joined the unseemly scramble to get off the SS Fabio before the Hungarian Iceberg hits.

There can't be many still in Capello's post-calamity creche who couldn't do with a break from pulling on the three kittens and stepping out on a top-weaved Wembley turf to a wall of passive aggression from the England fans. But still, it's starting to reek of yellow streak.

Fabio's Fashanu-elbowed a couple of undeserving blokes out of the squad and I assume Crouchy and Defoe's omissions are more down to Spurs having a Champs League qualifier than for any desperate shortcomings in South Africa. Hard to see what Stephen Warnock did wrong... or indeed what he did at all. Or Joe Cole, for that matter. Perhaps Capello has a pathological hatred for Oliver! the Musical.

Others can join Robinson, Brown and Heskey in the pub for wannabe pundits. David 'Macy Gray' James, Robert 'KitKat Fingers' Green, Matty Upson-Downs, Wrong Shite-Phillips... all are rightly on the discard pile.

The squad has stuck with some creaking old retainers, mind you. Those of us that have suspected that John Terry was an unshod carthorse with all the pace of a salted snail were proved right against Germany. Add to that his capacity for dipping his pen in the wrong inkwell and running off his mouth at the wrong mike and you have a walking, almost-talking disaster.

Lampard too might well be looking at long nights on a Good Morning sofa with Ms Bleakley rather than continuing to prove his limitations at international level.

Wazza - as in 'have a wazzagainst the bin, mate' - could do with having a bit of a rest n all. I'm not too fussed about his lewd behaviour, me. Apparently he had a fag on n all. Big deal.


Don't worry, Wayne - it is big and it is clever

I mean the Blue Bell used to have an end of season award called 'Best Goal Scored While Smoking'. We banned it not for PC reasons but cos in the act of deflecting a piledriver for a corner, the ball set Tony Thompson's in-pocket Swan Vestas alight and incinerated his 75% polyester footy shorts. I can tell he wwasn't playing in the hole for a few weeks after that.

You just hope when Giggsy tells you in a post-match interview that Wazza's 'on fire' it doesn't mean he's dropped his Silk Cut-butt inside his socks.

As for Gareth Barry, well, I'd rather he gave up footy and joined JT and Jamie Carragher in training for the London 2012 20km Plod (that's Walk). If all three of them run as fast as they can they could win us a medal and there'd be no danger of any of them being disqualified.

It's Carra from Barra from JT!!

Of course you can't really tell anything at this stage of the season. It's a preposterous game for the FA to organise. Clearly it was done with some post-WC glory in mind - you know... flag-waving yeomen swarming to nestle 'neath the Wembley arch and hail the glorious near-conquerors.

As it is it's effing meaniningless in the extreme. Why for example Ashley Young, Theo Walcott or Adam Johnson should be better qualified to play for England now, with precisely no competitive games played in the season, than they were in say, May, is impossible to argue.

The only qualities you want to see out on the pitch on Wednesday - given that touch and technique are guaranteed to be absent - are a bit of passion and a sense that the players want to be out there.

There's a delicious little bit of irony in that the yoof element of the squad comes mostly from that flimsy front for French-speaking immigrants, Arsenal FC. That's right! It's like finding out that the beef for your Sunday roasts has been supplied by the Vegetarian Society.

It's almost a shame that Fabregas's decision to stay (for one last hurrah) means Wilshere's opportunities will still be limited.

Of course we're stuck with Capello's management and not Andy Smart's inspired suggestion that a different pub selects the team each time. (Listen to Robbo Podcast 3, above). If the Blue Bell were in charge, the team would look like this:

Hart; G.Johnson, Jagielka, Dawson, A.Cole; Young/Milner, Wilshere, Parker, A Johnson; Gerrard; Rooney.

Clearly if we go to a two-man strike force then Wayne will be partnered by whoever has a lighter with him and my money would be on Zamora.

Of course most of us would've been delighted with a wholesale cull of the same magnitude as the French Football Federation's. I can see Anelka and Malouda chuntering away together at Chelsea HQ saying "'E 'az like totally Laurent Blanc-ed me!"

Whether I'll have owt to say on Wednesday's game is a moot point. As sport it's about as important as the Community Shield. Or the plotline of an Australian soap. Which brings us back to Paul Robinson.