The way in which England have started their new qualifying campaign for Euro 2012 has seen a remarkable about turn by certain sections of the English media in their regard for the national team. Football like a lot of sport is a fickle business so maybe the reporting of it is as prone to the highs and lows as those who partake in it.
For example fans always get on the back of a striker during a goal drought, but other supporters and pundits will be just as keen to stress that once the drought is broken the goals will come flooding back. Likewise there is the old adage that form is temporary and class is permanent, a good line for those that wish to argue with detractors of a player going through a rough patch.
With England's performances during the summer's World Cup there was more of a uniform agreement between English fans. The team had under performed and the display against Algeria was especially dismal and disappointing. There always follows the emotional crash when the national team exit a major competition, partly because we have such enormous hype before the event itself.
It is easy to completely blame the media for this; after all they have the power to engineer such hype. All the more since the onset of the Internet and the development of phone and other technologies meant that we are never too far away from seeing or reading something. This ties in with the advertising that is now bigger than it ever has been and utilises the Internet more than any other source it seems.
Even so we cannot hold the media to blame for much more than contributing to our own self-created hype. Football fans themselves would have been building up to the World Cup, they love the game and it is the biggest competition in this or any sport, plus- you have to wait 4 blooming years for the next one!
England fans in particular are used to perennial disappointment, in some ways you could say we thrive off of it. How else do you explain the way that however crap England are it's not long before they are playing to (almost) sell-out crowds again. The support is often touted as being amongst the best in the World and more of our fans travel to watch the national team and invest in going to World Cups etc than most- as many as 25,000 were thought to have made it to South Africa.
Still, we're not all driven by romanticised blind faith, I would like to think that the majority of football fans are driven by a sense of loyalty to their team even if they don't provide anything else. I once had a school friend who back during those days supported Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers and finally Newcastle United within the space of 2 seasons! Commonly referred to as a glory supporter he was the proper definition of such and even though he was just a fashionable fan a part of me had to voice my disapproval.
So what to make of the recent 'thrashings' handed out by England to Bulgaria and Switzerland respectively? Completely renewed optimism of course, the World Cup was obviously just a blip, that or they peaked too soon!
Although it's not quite that easy this time. I was amongst those that doubted if Steve McClaren was really becoming England manager at the right time, but the low of not qualifying for Euro 2008 meant that the subsequent positives from Capello's takeover sucked in even the most consistent of cynics. More to the point, this last World Cup was a slight watershed in that many fans overwhelmingly blamed the players for the flop in South Africa.
Yes Capello made some mistakes, and the performances in the last week have compounded a couple of those. The positives of seeing Adam Johnson, Theo Walcott and Joe Hart excelling themselves is slightly countered by the thought that Capello should have taken them to the World Cup in the first place.
On the whole however we should be happy to have Capello on board. It may seem quite a while ago now but England was at times very impressive in the qualifying for South Africa. The fact that they have started the same way for the next Euros in the Ukraine and Poland should be welcomed, even more so now that England appear to have a budding selection of youngsters vying for the positions of the old guard.
After the World Cup we just experienced there has though been some reigning in of the traditional optimism concerning England, at least where the fans come into play. I know some friends who whilst previously being ardent fans of all football decidedly avoided England's recent matches with Bulgaria and Switzerland.
Some of England's players have and are going through a difficult time in their private lives, all of them allegedly suffering from the same lustful temptations. Pardon the comparison, but it is possible that like some of these disclosures, the way England were during the summer was simply a straw too far for some of it's followers.
Nonetheless I'm sure those same fans will eventually forgive and forget. It just means that however emphatically England qualify for Euro 2012 we should all be wary to leave our predictions until the first group game has been played and not a moment sooner! As long as Capello ignores the famous musings of Alan Hansen and does put his faith in the kids, those years of hurt may finally, possibly (wishfully) get to an end.