The strange case of Lampard and Gerrard

Put Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in any shirt that isn’t decorated by three lions and they are giants, mouth-watering commodities in the great football market. But then when you dress them in the uniform of England they dwindle before your eyes. It happened last summer in the vital matches of the European Championship in Portugal and it was the same in Copenhagen this week when a terrible bankruptcy came to the team who, 24 hours earlier, had been trumpeting their potential to win the World Cup.

The Independent’s James Lawton writes about England’s wounded team spirit, caused by Sven Goran Eriksson’s scatter-gun substitite policy.