A rare photo of Ledley in action. Frame it.

Morning readers! How are you today in grey, blustery and comforting England? I can tell you that, minus the locals and poor people, that South Africa is AMAZING. It’s great to be here on the eve of the World Cup knowing that you’re one of the few. One of the elite. One of the chosen. When you face a fellow England international in the Premier League you instinctively recognise one another as equals and share a rapport that cannot be broken. NEVER BROKEN. It is good to be back amongst my brothers.

Yesterday I had my first team talk with the manager in the hotel car park. It was very exciting! Capello looked me dead in the eye and said to me, mano to mano, “Owen. Keep your distance.”

“Keep my distance,” I replied. Nodding and hanging on every word, listening intently to his words of wisdom. It was great he was talking to me again! “Like I’m playing….. in the hole?”

“erm…..yes…..” Capello replied carefully, “..you’d be good in a… hole….”

I think that’s what he said anyway. I was mainly lip reading through the bullet proof windows of his car and, what with me hammering on said window, some of the finer points of the conversation may have been drowned out, but I think I picked up on the salient points. Regardless in those moments I think we connected and my role in the England set up came into sharp HD focus. He wanted me to drop deeper, to conserve my limited energy and to support the midfielders. Great plan boss!

Later that day I followed Capello’s instructions to a letter. I perched myself on the flat roof of a building opposite the Moruleng Stadium and peered through my telescopic lens – mounted on my L12 52. calibre snipers rifle, and observed England’s unimpressive 3-0 win over Platinum Stars.

Curses! You have deeply vexed me sir!

I noted several things from my camoflagued vantage point and jotted down notes in my black book. Firstly we looked unimpressive against essentially a non league team, their ’star player’ was former Spurs reject Mbulelo Mabizela. How bad was he? Well let’s just say he isn’t remembered as fondly as good as fellow Spurs flop Timothy Atouba. Who wasn’t as good as his replacement Erik Edelman. Who in turn wasn’t as good as Gilberto. Who was replaced by Benoit Assou-Ekotto who is currently being eclipsed by Gareth Bale. They go through alot of left backs don’t they? What I’m getting at is that in the pecking order of Spurs left backs over the past five years he was so bad he could have worn leather trousers, a matching jacket and one fingerless glove and been on the front cover of a seminal 1980’s pop album.

Chamone.

Anyway it wasn’t pretty. Capello experimented with different support strikers either side of half time and played Heskey, and then Crouch, in my role, to ill effect, just behind Rooney. After putting in performances like that they won’t only be in my cross hairs! In fact they were so inept that you could partially excuse Wayne for his mid game temper tantrum. What people fail to understand is that in his own primitive way this is him just expressing himself and trying to communicate with people. Like a chimp picking fleas out of your hair. It’s his loveable way.

Anyway we went on to ‘win’ 3-0. Pah. Wait until the Yanks get a load of ME.

See you Saturday boys!

‘Brap’

Michael P Owen.