As a nation emerges bleary-eyed and hung over from bunkers up and down the land, the fickle (yellow) finger of fate ha-ha-ing over us like Nelson Muntz, it’s clear these have been a few days best forgotten.

The press have been predictably hysterical about the Algeria game, heaping scorn upon Fabio Capello who only a fortnight ago seemed to be in an unassailable position. There has been a general call for Joe Cole to be given a start, and a baffled frustration at the form of Wayne Rooney, our one world class player.

But what we couldn’t have predicted is the disarray that the England Camp seems to been falling into in the days since. There have been rumours for a while now that the squad wanted to play with Rooney as a lone striker, Steven Gerrard lurking with intent in front of a midfield four. But on Saturday, new keeper David James suggested that players needed to get grievances off their chests and discuss them openly - a suggestion that was taken to imply that there were a few unhappy players, and that James was one of them.

Then on Sunday, a disbelieving press gathered at a John Terry press conference to hear him go further, that there would be “clear-the-air talks” and appearing to wear the mantle of players’ representative. He also went on to suggest quite openly that his club colleague Joe Cole should be starting tomorrow's showdown match against Slovenia – quite what Emile Heskey, the man presumably to step down, made of it was anybody’s guess. And, why was it Terry saying this? Where was the team captain?

Within hours, stories and tweets were coming out of the camp, making it clear that Terry wasn’t quite the shop steward he liked to think he was, and that the players weren’t happy with what he’d said. The promised showdown, didn’t appear to take place, and the following day, Capello appeared in front of the cameras, talking about Terry’s “mistake”. An ignominious apology from Terry followed.

The subtext behind all this is that people are remembering and referring to similarly bad World Cup starts in both Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90. At this point in both campaigns, senior players like Gary Lineker, Terry Butcher, Ray Wilkins and Chris Waddle went to manager Bobby Robson and told him where they felt things were going wrong, and how they wanted to play.

In both campaigns, England performances improved dramatically and the team acquitted themselves well, eventually exiting in fairly unlucky circumstances (the Hand of God goal in ’86 and a semi final penalty shoot-out in ’90). A nation dreams wistfully of such glorious defeats…

Problem is, Capello is not Bobby Robson – he does not operate with such flexibility, and you could argue that flawed characters such as Terry, Ashley Cole and Steven Gerrard are not the sort of senior professionals he should be deferring to anyway.

“But at least there’s some good news for England” as Gary Lineker pointed out in his BBC coverage of the Mundial,

“At least, we’re not France!”