So, England are out of the World Cup. Never mind the dodgy linesman’s decision which wrongly ruled out Frank Lampard’s goal. The fact is, the team just weren’t good enough anyway. So, what went wrong?

I blame John Terry. No, really. Hear me out.

England breezed through qualification. They didn’t become a bad team, and Fabio Capello didn’t become a bad manager, overnight. So what changed?

What changed was Terry sticking his dick where it didn’t belong. That cost him his authority in the team, and cost him the captaincy. Then Rio Ferdinand got injured, and the armband ended up with Steven Gerrard.

But Gerrard isn’t an England captain. He can’t lift a team when it’s down, and he needs someone else on the field to tell him to play for the team instead of himself. He needs a captain to lift him out of himself when he’s playing badly. With the armband, he drags everyone down to his level when he’s not playing well.

And he didn’t play well. Maybe the weight of the captaincy itself contributed to that. But, whatever the reason, the team also played badly as a result. And that’s why they’re on the way home.

A good captain could have made a difference. But the best captain in the team had thrown it away through his own stupid behaviour, and the second-best captain got injured through no fault of his own. Ferdinand’s injury wouldn’t have mattered in that respect if Terry had kept his libido under control. But it did matter, and the team paid the price. I only hope that Terry realises that he did to England’s chances in the World Cup exactly what he did to Vanessa Perroncel.