Armchair viewers are left bewildered as pundits get lost for words. Fortunately Simon Tyers isn't

It cannot be any more than coincidence that Rodney Marsh’s return to television on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has come in the same month as the latest Sex Pistols reunion, but anyone who has seen Johnny Rotten interviewed in the last few years will appreciate the similarities between the public face both put on. There are uncanny similarities – the forced inertia, the garrulous body language, the belief that their headline comments are in any way meant to shake up our expectations of them, right down to how both have flown in from their American poolsides.

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A week of hopes and fears for Scotland and England led to double failure but contrasting reactions online, as Ian Plenderleith found out with the help of a folk singer and various dead writers

England’s and Scotland’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 not only proved there is no longer a British team in the continent’s top ranks. The contrast in home reactions to that failure also showed us that, although the end result may be the same, an underdog country’s sporting patriots generally maintain a healthy perspective, while a Bulldog Nation’s repeat anticipation of glory only perpetuates its misery and ill-humour.

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The Bristol City manager is left red faced after giving Liam Fontaine the perfect motivation to score a peachy goal

By now Gary Johnson should have exposed his naked backside in a shop window in Bristol. Johnson promised to do so if Liam Fontaine scored this season, which Fontaine duly did against Wolves. However, despite talking about it in the press, as well as devoting a section of his post-match press conferences to discussing it, at the time of writing we still can’t be sure that Johnson has actually gone ahead and done so.

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Journalists make it personal, turning up the heat on Steve McClaren to create words and to protect their own interests

Newspaper coverage of Steve McClaren’s final month as England manager was both relentless and remorseless. Even in the usually more even-handed broadsheet press the tone rarely rose above the standard “Sack This Fool Now” template. “This is a black and white issue,” wrote Martin Samuel in the Times on November 12, in a column headlined Fail and McClaren has to go. For the football press there was simply no alternative.

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Qualification failure leaves England searching for answers but are supporters aware of how heavy their expectations weigh? 

We had the cover of this issue worked out ahead of the Croatia match. “Disaster for England” would have been the headline, with two players discussing the fact that qualifying meant Steve McClaren was still the manager. We should have known better. Still, in the wake of the Wembley debacle, it has been suggested that England’s worst ever qualification failure may yet have a silver lining if it leads to the “root and branch investigation” of English football promised by the FA.

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