Being obsessed with brands we always like to look at everyday situations as though they were brands. We thought the much maligned England football squad would make a good analogy. Anybody who watched the England vs Croatia match last week would have to say that England were disappointing to say the least- disjointed, at odds and lacking cohesion. A team full of gifted individuals being took to school by a team everybody expected us to beat. It has been a perennial problem, and the underlying reason for many managers losing their jobs that the expectation levels for England are too high. If we were looking at the team as a brand we would say that their brand promise is over exaggerating what they are delivering in reality- a bit like the Wonderbra of football teams. Yet it’s not just this over promising where we could apply the brand analogy, the lack of direction and sense of cohesion is like a company with no central idea and values. The players were acting exactly as staff that didn’t have a grip of the bigger picture, who didn’t know the part they were meant to be playing in achieving an overall goal. Steve McClaren, the man tasked with providing this vision and direction and communicating it failed miserably. Like every other England fan, eternal optimists we still hold out hope for someone to come in and provide this direction. Jose Mourinho, must surely be the man to inject some life into our national squad and provide the perfect antidote to last week’s pitiful sight of McClaren, umbrella in hand, beleaguered and at sea in the pissing down rain.