Again, again

It's usually about this time in a World Cup that I start to drift free of my moorings. It's the lack of human contact that does it. I've taken time off work, and retired to my sofa for three weeks. In the bad old days I used to have to go food shopping, but Asda have solved all that. My lodgers are away, and it's been a while since I last had to have a realtime human conversation.

So the England games are good for me, in that I usually watch them with people. We drink, we eat pizza, we share a space. It reminds me that language can also be delivered orally, and reconnects me to a world where a day might be known as Sunday rather than Day Four.

That didn't happen yesterday, because who wants to go out at 11:00 on a Saturday night? Young people, that's who. Which doesn't exactly describe my inner circle. So the thanks, goodbye I offered the newsagent yesterday morning remains the full extent of my human interaction since I left work on Wednesday night.

And England? Well I thought they came out of yesterday's defeat as well as you ever can. Sterling and Sturridge looked good, and Rooney looked far better than some people are saying he looked.

Rooney's problem is what you might call new produce syndrome. We've all had onions before, so when they offer us onions of a different shape or colour we're all over them. Once you get the new ones into the frying pan, though, we're reminded why traditional onions got to be traditional. It's because they're the best onions. It's the same with Rooney, just like it used to be with Beckham. In 2006 we all got arsey with Beckham just because we did tolerably well after he limped off against Portugal, forgetting that he scored or made three out of the six goals we scored in that tournament. Now it's Rooney's turn to be the boring onions.

Just to refresh people's memories (and I say this with some asperity), he scored seven goals in our qualifying group. No-one else from any country scored more than four. Three of them were fill-your-boots goals against San Marino, but he also got the crucial goals against Poland and Montenegro that actually got us through in the first place. Obviously he's not done quite so well for his club just recently, but that's because United have been on a gap year. And it's worth bearing in mind that not quite so well means 17 goals, putting him in fourth place for the season behind Suarez, Sturridge and Toure. I've just checked down that list, and out of the top 20 scorers every healthy player whose country qualified is in Brazil right now except Jay Rodriguez. We've seen several of them already, and no-one has been demanding that their managers drop them.

He did miss a good chance last night, but he also put the cross in for our only goal, despite being asked to play out of his usual position. And yet Twitter hates him, and Hodgson is having to fend off questions about his comfort levels. Yes he looks like a potato, but compared to the Italians all our players look like potatoes. And sometimes the boring potatoes are the best.

There are other grounds for optimism. Our next game is against Uruguay, who were thoroughly outclassed in their game against the less than stellar Costa Rica. Suarez didn't come on, which under the circumstances can only be down to injury, and Maxi Pereira is suspended after he was sent off in the last minute when he momentarily forgot you weren't allowed to just kick people to the ground.

Of course Costa Rica will be a harder game now, but it's worth remembering that England have a slight advantage in goal difference compared to Uruguay, so a win and a draw may well be enough.

So there are reasons to look forward to Thursday with optimism. At the more civilised time of eight o'clock. Who's up for it?