Shearer Says: “It’s hard to judge where England are at”

Goalscoring great gives his Three Lions insight

Let’s start with the positive – England have made it to the World Cup finals! 

However, it’s hard to judge where the team is at the end of qualifying. 

Results-wise it has been decent but it was decent before we went to France for the Euros, and we all know what happened there, so it’s very difficult to make an assessment until we actually get to Russia.

The one difference from the past is our expectation levels have changed, but we have to see an improvement to what we saw in France last summer. 

Nobody realistically expects us to win it, so we just need to show some improvement, show we’re moving in the right direction.

We’re quite a way behind the likes of Germany, France and Spain at the moment, I don’t think there’s any way that we can compete with the big boys at the World Cup.

I don’t think anybody expects us to, do they? Which is not a bad thing, we are where we are and we have to accept that.

There’s more than one problem

The current failings are down to a combination of factors. We haven’t got enough English players playing in our teams in the Premier League, that’s one problem. 

Another is that we’ve been starved of success for such a long time now that it is becoming harder and harder for every generation.

My era were expected to deliver and we didn’t. So the longer it goes on, the longer there’s no history of winning, the harder it is to have a winning mentality.

The players do have to show mental toughness, that they are better than what we’ve seen so far from them in an England shirt.