And so it begins. Even though he adds a caveat at the end, Simon Burnton is now starting what was inevitable - when England fans start believing we will win the World Cup. It always happens. We struggle through qualifying, we lose to Northern Ireland - we accept reality. We are good but not that good. There are better teams. It'll be wicked if we make it through to the Semis.

But then as the World Cup gets closer and closer we just can't help ourselves. We start thinking 'Well, this is the best England team in the last 30 years' or 'Brazil have never won a World Cup in Europe' or other such fanciful thoughts.

Then come the World Cup we'll scrape through the first round, again our hopes will be lowered to something near normal but then we'll win in style against Costa Rica in the second round and GAME ON! We're gonna win the world cup! Woo-hoo!

Then we'll play Germany. We'll be much the better team. We'll have a goal disallowed. We'll pretend we're Italian and try and defend a one goal lead. When Germany score to equalise in the last minute we'll realise that was very silly and perhaps we should have learnt from the 1000 unsuccessful attempts before when we've tried to defend a one goal lead. We'll hit the post in extra time. The whistle will blow. Peter Crouch will stand up to take our last penalty.

There'll be tears before bedtime.

It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking predictable.