The failure of England's Under-21 side to get out of their group at the European Championships is yet another in a long line of disappointments for the national team in recent years.

It was not even so much the results themselves that are so unpalatable, but the manner of them. The young players, just like their senior counterparts, seemed to run out of ideas all too quickly. It seems that creativity is just not in the English footballing culture. If you look at the Premier League, the main creative sources in most teams are foreigners.

How many truly accomplished all-round footballers have

Saturday's match against Switzerland at Wembley is a good opportunity for Darren Bent to build on his recent performances for England, but that should not disguise the fact that he is not international class and the country is bereft of top-class strikers.

If Bent scores against the Swiss, as he did in the away fixture in September and the qualifier against Wales in March, then he will have taken the chance presented to him once again. However, his ability pales in comparison to some of the strikers England have had in the past.

Bent is scoring with regularity in the Premier League, and

Rio Ferdinand should apologise to Edwin van
der Sar for the poor backpass that started the chain of events before
Manchester City's FA Cup goal - and he should to it in person, not via a stupid
Twitter comment.

Everyone talked about Michael Carrick's lazy
ball that directly resulted in Yaya Toure's winner and indeed it exposed a
failing in the Manchester United midfielder's game: sometimes he is brilliant,
but all-too-often he makes these kinds of sloppy errors.

But Ferdinand's initial backpass was poor
and selfish: 99 times out of 100 he clears his lines but he saw an easier
option in playing

There
is a perception among some people ahead of the Champions League final that
Barcelona are a team who don't like it up them and can be muscled out of
contention.

I
saw Jack Wilshere advising United to 'get in their faces', although I'm not sure
what a 19-year-old Arsenal midfielder can offer a man with 47 trophies to his
name in terms of tactical pointers.

This
Barcelona team are certainly not soft touches. This season they have overcome a
Real Madrid team that seemed intent on hacking their way to victory, and they
have been on tough away trips to places like Ukraine and won.

Let's

On balance,
Wayne Rooney probably deserves a ban and heavy fine for his unacceptable
outburst during the win over West Ham.

Everything
that's going on now - on and off the pitch - was going on when I was playing.

In those
days though cameras didn't get shoved in your face so much and people didn't follow
- or care about - your every move: times have changed and the money in the game
reflects that.

Wayne
should be clever enough to know you can't do that. He has a child himself and,
like any parent, you don't want someone effing and jeffing in front of your
kids.

He would
take umbrage if a man

The root of West Ham United's relegation from the Premier League stems right from the top. Sure, their bumbling players and dour manager have to take their fair share of the blame, but it is those in charge who are most culpable for their awful season.

The two Davids, Gold and Sullivan, and Karren Brady had the chance to change things around in January but got it all wrong. They completely mismanaged the planned transition from Avram Grant to Martin O'Neill, and as a result lost out on hiring one of the most astute managers out there and ending up stuck with a lame duck in the dugout.

They

GAME OF THE WEEKEND: Manchester United v Blackpool

A lot has been made of the so-called 'weakened team' that United are going to field against Blackpool.

Alex Ferguson has confirmed that Darren Fletcher, Paul Scholes, Anderson, Dimitar Berbatov and Edwin van der Sar will all play. That is clutch of players for which most managers would kill.

They are unlikely to be phoning in their performances either. They will all, to one degree or another, be pushing for a starting berth in the Champions League final the following week.

Ian Holloway has helped stoke up the controversy by claiming that the

I was at Manchester United when they won their first Premier League title in 1993. That was the club's eighth title overall, and I can assure everyone that at the time none of the players could have imagined that United would now be on the verge of beating Liverpool's record of 18 titles.

For Sir Alex Ferguson, however, I think it was always a different story. He came to United with the aim of one day surpassing Liverpool's domestic dominance and, after winning his first Champions League, set his sights on beating them in Europe too.

If United beat Barcelona in this season's final at Wembley,