Despite the match being a friendly the allure of England v Germany guarantees passionate support from the crowd and indeed the nation with nothing less than a great performance and a resounding win in exchange. Unfortunately the Wembley crowd and those who watched the live football at home or in the pubs saw neither.

With a multitude of injuries McClaren was forced to line up Michael Owen and Alan Smith in attack; however it was Frank Lampard in the ninth minute who was to lift the crowd with a powerful shot finishing off a fine flurry of passes to give England the lead. At this stage of the game the omens looked good as Germany were unable to muster any chances and the makeshift England team grew in confidence, that is except for the under pressure keeper Paul Robinson who with 26 minutes gone went to meet a cross from Schneider and only succeeded in flapping the ball down to the waiting Kuranyi who couldn’t miss from within the box. Only Robinson will know what he was trying to do but whatever it was he failed miserably.

One all became two one to the visitors as Pander unleashed a powerful shot on 40 from long range which flew past a diving Robinson and nestled into the back of the England net.

England still created chances and should have gone into half time on level terms had Michael Owen not ballooned a shot over the bar as he turned and shot a misjudged block from German keeper on the right hand of the Germany 6 yard box.

The second half saw Robinson relegated to the bench and despite further chances the best falling to Keiron Dyer the score remained 2-1 in Germany’s favour. Despite the result there were some positives one being the re-emergence of Shaun Wright-Phillips who came off the bench late in the game and showed his willingness to get forward and take on his opponents. Micah Richards as well was very dependable both as right back and in the second half as centre back. He too showed a willingness to go forward in the first half and was involved in the England opening goal.

Unfortunately for McClaren he has only a few weeks to put the negative aspects of the team to right before entering the crucial phase of their qualifying campaign for Euro 2008 and for the remainder of their matches any more slip ups as were seen tonight will mean disaster.