Do or die

The knives are glinting. The tabloids’ art desks stand ready to superimpose the turnip’s head. Should England’s footballers fail to win the two home matches, against Israel on Saturday and Russia on Wednesday, they are surely doomed to elimination from next summer’s European Championship finals, and their hapless manager Steve McClaren to redundancy and character assassination by a thousand cuts. As his teams have hobbled from one qualifying disappointment to another, there has always been the hope — presumption even — that when the endgame was called this autumn a fit and settled team would be in place handsomely to dismiss the doubters and bin their sarcastic jibes. After all, and in spite of having no track record to speak of, McClaren’s jaunty enough front has always been an upbeat one — smart, smiling, assured and insistent on the snappy spin-doctor’s optimistic ‘positives’ that, when it mattered, all would be right on the night.