THERE'S no room for mediocre performances any more - England must raise their game NOW or we'll exit the World Cup on Saturday.

Portugal are a good side, a quality side, much better than the likes of Ecuador and Paraguay.

We really must up our game, because if we perform the way we did against Trinidad and Tobago, then we'll be getting on that plane home.

Portugal's manager, Phil Scolari, has had the Indian sign over England the last couple of times we've come across him.

He nearly landed the England job earlier this summer and now we end up playing his side again. It's amazing how things work out.

But I think we get can the better of Scolari this time. We've got the players to beat Portugal and reach the semi-finals, but we need to step it up.

We generally raise our game against decent opposition and I'm hoping we can do it again.

It's going to be a tough game though. We are evens money to win, while Portugal are 5/2, but I think it will be a lot closer than that, especially on current form.

I'm glad Deco is suspended - that's one less thing to worry about. He's been a good player at Barcelona and scored a cracking goal earlier in the World Cup. But saying that, I don't think he's as good as Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard.

Lampard and Gerrard must come to the table, though, along with everyone else. So far, our matches have been boring. It's been like watching paint dry.

It's as though we're waiting for England to explode, to finally get going. If they click, potentially they could win the World Cup.

I'm just glad we are still in the competition because some good sides, such as Holland and Czech Republic, are already out.

But we've had some easy games along the way. Ecuador played well when they beat Poland 2-0 on the first day of the competition, but they did nothing against us.

Again, we made hard work of it and we needed an excellent free-kick from David Beckham to get us through.

Beckham has taken a bit of stick off the press and I suppose that was always going to happen. For a long time, he's been the absolute darling of English football.

He's always going to get criticism because you cannot be number one all the time as you get older.

I don't like him wearing head-bands - I'm not into stuff like that - but he's a good player. Experience-wise, I would still have him in the England side.

Let's hope he does the business!

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