EVERY few years we all can’t be helped to be drawn into this national euphoria surrounding the England football team.

And every few years we have to tell every idiot who thinks we are fantastic that we are in fact average at best.

I had thought the wider media had learned its lesson but they just couldn’t resist themselves and decided to go nuts after we beat Tunisia.

For those jumping up and down and thinking this was a great victory – it wasn’t. We had players on the pitch who were worth 100 hundred times more than the opposition. We should be beating Tunisia comfortably.

What I would like is for just for a moment for everyone to stop boasting about beating national teams we should be expected to beat.

Now, I am the most hardcore England fan there is in this town you will know but I am realist.

I have long realised that young players are lot more likely to do better at these tournaments than the overpaid and over-rated mega stars we used to put our hopes on before.

When I am actually chosen as England manager I would make sure all the players were from the lower leagues and all aged under 25.

I have to say I do have a certain level of hope for the present team but I must mention some facts that are had to ignore.

The last time England beat any major footballing nation in a knockout round was in the quarter-finals of the 1996 European Championships – that was Spain on penalties.

Before then we haven’t beaten anyone of note since 1966.

The likes of Belgium in 1990 and Denmark in 2002 simply don’t count. When faced with the main footballing nations on the planet we have failed.

I do think we have become a nervous nation in recent years after having been humiliated by Iceland in 2016. A result after which I promised never to watch an England game.

But all bad records are there to be broken.

So, before we start jumping up and down and pretending we are going to rule the planet let us just calm down.

It is a World Cup. We are playing nations we should be beating and if we manage to overcome a real footballing nation then I shall walk through Blackburn town centre in my underpants. It’s warm enough.