The Milton Mount United under-13's squad of 1990 (of which I was a pivotal part) was about as far removed from a merit-based youth set-up as you could get. This was a fucking peer popularity contest and make no mistake, and barring the occasional 13-0 reverse, that unique brand of recruitment won a lot of fans along the way. (Well, as you long as the captain liked you, anyways.)

But they were naive and harmless days, when Ron Atkinson humming a tune by the Average White Band barely raised an eyebrow, and the sight of John Barnes in tights was sensible, not perverse.

So little did I imagine that some 17 years later, and in this new dawn of mass professionalism, teams would still be making the same mistakes as us Milton Mount whipping boys.

I mean, was Lawrie Sanchez on a bung from the Irish Embassy at the start of the season?

The former Northern Ireland manager had an obsession with his international world-beaters and recruited the entirety of the team that beat England, plus shipped the entire Windsor Park pitch to London and plonked it on top of the existing Craven Cottage playing surface. And the team running out to Simple Minds' eponymous 1989 classic 'Belfast Child' .. ? Well, that's just taking the piss.

It was never going to work, but Roy Hodgson hasn't learned from Lawrie the Loser's race relation mistakes. The former Blackburn chief is eyeing up the lights of Broadway (Ealing Broadway, at this rate), with his US infatuation. I mean, one Yank in a squad is political correctness, two is verging on careless, but five of the blighters is just ridiculous.