So a toothless, lacklustre and boring England disappoint once again – this time drawing against Israel.

There are so many problems with the whole England setup at the moment it’s just pathetic.

Firstly the manager. The fact is Steve McClaren is completely average manager – and I cannot emphasise that enough. He is more of a PR man than a football manager and his only real achievement to date was being Alex Ferguson’s right hand man when Manchester United won the treble in 1999. And wasn’t he England’s 7th choice anyway?

Then onto the players who actually wear the shirt and represent us on the pitch. Because we now have one of the best leagues in the world, we have a situation in this country where we totally overhype our own players beyond belief. The problem is because the game is so big the players actually believe their own hype and think they are world class. But even on a technical level, were are a million miles away from the Brazilians, Italians, French and even the Germans of this world.

And this is made even more depressing when you compare our ‘progress’ – and I use that term lightly – against the neighbouring nations in the qualifiers.

Scotland currently still on top of Group B with 12 points, in a group that includes France, Ukraine and Italy.

In Group D, The Republic of Ireland are currently in 3rd position with 10 points – the same total as the Czech Republic. Only Germany are above them with 13 points.

And onto Northern Ireland. After trouncing Leichtenstein 4-1 last night they sit in 2nd place with 10 points, only 2 behind the leaders Sweden. And that’s in a group also contains Denmark and Spain!

It beggars belief how we are stuggling in such an easy group.

Now I’m sure there will be numerous excuses including fixture congestion in England, and injuries to key players like Michael Owen. But if we can’t find 11 decent players to field and beat Israel then something is wrong.

And surely other national teams have their own problems as well. We need to stop looking for excuses all the time!

God, why the hell do I waste time watching International football?

With Arsenal having a multi-national squad they have no less than 12 players involved in ‘International Friendly Week’ and hopfully come Sunday’s game with Wigan we will have no fresh injury worries to the ones we already have.

It’s great news for Matheiu Flamini who has been included in the French squad for the first time alongside Thierry. Gallas is still injured so won’t feature – although nothing surprises me with the French team!

Gilberto played the full 90 minutes against Portugal at the Emirates but couldn’t prevent the Portu-geezers from scoring 2 late goals. The good news is that there have been no reports of any knocks for Gilberto so he should be fine for Sunday.

Adebayor, Kolo, Lehmann, Freddie, Poom and Rosicky are also in their respective squads for their countries, while Walcott and Hoyte featured for the U21’s last night in the draw against Spain.

The other international on duty is Cesc who is in the Spain squad for tonights game with England. There’s a lot of talk about non-footballing issues surrounding the game but I’m sure that won’t detract from another boring England match.

McClaren has named a strange team for tonight’s match:

Ben Foster, Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, Jonathan Woodgate, Philip Neville, Steven Gerrard, Michael Carrick, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Frank Lampard, Kieron Dyer and Peter Crouch.

I’m not sure why Dyer and SWP have been given a chance, when other players like Scott Parker and Gareth Barry are much more worthy of a shot. And it’s amazing how many average players have made the squad but maybe that’s just the state of English football than McClaren’s inept managing capabilities.

But I do think Ben Foster is a decent inclusion, although that’s more down to the fact the highly over-rated Paul Robinson won’t be playing.

I say over-rated because Watford – with a generally excepted worst squad and defence – have conceded 37 goals in the Premiership this season, while Spurs have conceded 36. David James and Nicky Weaver have conceded less goals!

I’m sure Cesc will get a chance since he plays football in England, although you don’t know what Aragones will do.

With a slow week for domestic teams Sky Sports have rehashed the age old story of Robert Pires and how he is still upset about being taken off in the Champions League Final. But in slightly more interesting news Tomas Rosicky was crowed the Czech Player of the Year – well done son.

England are clear favourites for tonights game so I’d recommend putting a few quid on Spain to win. Although that depends on how they can defend long balls and crosses to Peter Crouch.

Well it’s official, Michel Platini has been appointed the new UEFA President beating Lennart Johansson and could this be the end of football as we know it?

Platini has expressed his desire to ignore video technology (which has helped other sports like Rugby for example) and wants to use 4 linesmen instead! What the hell happens if the two linesmen in one half disagree? And if one awards offside does that overrule the other linesman who thinks it wasn’t offside?

Apparently the new UEFA President has also said in the past that he would like to ban tackling from football.

Brilliant.

But probably the biggest change he would make would be to reduce the number of teams from England competing in the Champions League from 4 to 3. With Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United relying on this competition it would really effect the English game.

But the question is would Platini allow more teams from other countries or simply reduce the number of teams in the actual competition?

Because if he starts adding more teams from lesser leagues then the quality of the Champions League will suffer dramatically.

And is Michel Platini just a puppet of Sepp Blatter? Because we all know about the crazy ideas that Blatter had being the President of FIFA so I hope Platini doesn’t follow suit and ruin the game from the inside!

There was a lot of hype over the ‘Undercover: Football’s Dirty Secrets’ exposé which was shown last night, where it was implied that several Premiership managers including Sam Allardyce wouldn’t be adverse to taking what is known as a ‘bung’ from players agents to sanction a successful move of a player to Bolton Wanderers.

Now it would be easy to ‘read in between the lines’ and jump on the bandwagon (especially as I’m not exactly a fan of the Walrus) but what I personally saw last night was something that did not show any actual proof of managers receiving bungs or illegal payments, but essentially a few agents boasting about giving managers, scouts and other people some favours like staying in a hotel for a few weeks!

Groundbreaking stuff!

But I suppose all the speculation and hype drummed up by the BBC was an attempt to boost the ratings of a show that needed viewers.

After watching the hour-long programme, I felt conned that I had wasted an hour of my time which could have been spent in the pub. A lot of hearsay and conjecture from agents – who everyone knows aren’t exactly the most trustworthy people in the world!

And why were other clubs and managers ‘blanked out’ of the show?

Is it because the agents were talking utter b*llocks and they would get sued if they even suggested these other teams and managers accepted bungs?

According to the documentary throughout the programme agents had named between 16/18 managers that would accept bungs. Without actually naming them it’s just pure speculation!

It seemed from the outset that the BBC had some sort of hidden agenda with Sam Allardyce they way they were specifically going after him!

And it was very hard to believe that the undercover reported ‘Knut’ was actually on the verge of giving a manager a £50,000 bung only for Mike Newell to go to the press and ruin there chances of completing the deal.

What a huge co-incidence!

But after the Newsnight programme ‘exposing Arsenal’s links with Beveren’ what are we to expect from the BBC these days?

Now I don’t doubt that there is probably some sort of corruption in the game – there have been high-profile incidents in Italy and Germany so why not in England? But I also doubt last night’s show was anything more than poor journalism.

Harry Redknapp who was shown on the programme has said that he has given his last interview to the BBC and he is also considering legal advice, as is Sam Allardyce. Which is only to be expected really…

And to think we all thought the domination of The Premier League was in the hands of Chelsea and their billions.

How wrong we were.

With todays quite amazing news that West Ham United have managed to sign Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano you have to wonder what the hell just happened here, and what does it mean for English football.

With huge clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Roma all linked to the Argentinean Duo you have to ask yourself how did they sign for West Ham?

How can they even afford these players – remembering that Tevez had a buy-out clause in his contract worth £68 million that needed to be paid off in order for him to even leave Corinthians.

So you can bet that this ‘undisclosed fee’ West Ham got these players for was nothing, especially since MSI were preparing a takeover bid of WHU last year.

But of course, the President of London-based MSI (Media Sports Investments) Kia Joorabchian who own Corinthians have signed a crop of Brazilian and South American talent in their time with their new found wealth, including players such as Maxi Lopez, Lucho Gonzalez, Carlos Alberto, Wagner Love & Sebastian Dominguez.

Haven’t heard of them? You will do.

Great news for West Ham fans who can expect massive transfer coups over the next few seasons as they look to attack Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool at the top of The Premiership.

Bad news for the rest of the league.

And another worrying aspect is that although Kia Joorabchian denies any involvement with Roman Abramovich in regards to MSI they do have business links through another Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky so aren’t exactly strangers to each other.

Of course Abramovich also denies any financial interest in CSKA Moscow, even though a company that he is a shareholder of Sibneft are the shirt sponsors of CSKA in a £30 million, 3 year deal.

Or maybe West Ham won’t be bought out by MSI and won’t become a major force in the game over the next few years. Maybe West Ham are just a feeder club to Chelsea, who will monitor the players progress over the season and then decide if they are good enough to play for them in The Premiership.

Either way, neither scenario is exactly great for Arsenal!