Our Friday column in The Sunderland Echo comes from Stephen Goldsmith:

UNLIKE the rising number of English football fans disinterested in the national team these days, I was quite content watching the victory in Switzerland on Monday night.

The main source of my satisfaction came in Roy Hodgson finally getting to grips with a modern system and implementing it successfully.

The one long-standing irritant is the observation that they are still reluctant to play a specialist defensive midfielder; we instead see them try and redefine other players so they can be shoehorned in to the formation, apparently on the basis that they play for top sides.

Lee Cattermole anyone?

You can read the rest of the column here.