HOWZAT

Yesterday, Gerrard felt some explaining was required. “ [In that interview] I was not complaining or having a dig,” he said. “I had merely been asked how many times I had been played in my favourite position for England compared with Liverpool and I gave an honest answer.

“It was a guess, but if I am in the starting XI and asked to do a specific job by a manager, I’ll go out and give it everything.” Even on the left wing? “I wouldn’t say it’s easy preparing for a different role. But we want this team to be successful. Me and Lampard is not as important as the fact this team is improving slowly.”

Advances under Capello, while not necessary smooth, are undeniable. Confidence is growing and Rooney’s re-emergence as a goalscorer has left the midfield conundrum, and Gerrard in particular, as the main concern for the manager. “He [Capello] is prepared to help me,” Gerrard said yesterday, but first the player may have to help himself. “Left wing? Absolutely, boss. I’d be delighted.” That would be a start.

Mob rule at work among boo boys

At least half the comments on Times Online yesterday argued that Ashley Cole deserved to be booed on Saturday. And many of them came down to berating “Cashley” as a symbol of the overpaid, overhyped footballer in the age of baby Bentleys and WAGs.

Yet even if we agree that Cole was highly objectionable in the way he secured his move to Chelsea, if the jeering is down to dislike rather than a bad back-pass, why wait? Why not boo him into the stadium? And then when he comes out for the warm-up. Boo him again when his name is announced.

Maybe we can go the whole way and have a boo-ometer installed at Wembley so that Fabio Capello knows exactly which characters are wanted for the England team and which players are regarded as too flash, too greedy or, in Peter Crouch’s case, too gangly.

Yes, you may have forgotten that the amiable, committed Portsmouth forward was previously jeered, as was the equally conscientious Owen Hargreaves for no other reason than he was then an unknown from Bayern Munich. Which rather destroys the idea that a moral force is at work, with Cole its deserving target. The jeering is the behaviour of the mob, and an ugly mob at that.

Our Olympians have earned their day in the sun

Thanks largely to the desperation of our politicians to attach themselves to sporting success, we tend to go over the top in our celebrations.

Bus-top parades for winning a single Ashes series; a Downing Street reception for being knocked out of a football World Cup quarter-final. Win anything and it is gongs all round.

A hangover normally follows, but in the case of our Olympians, who will be paraded through London on floats on Thursday, we can make an exception. These are athletes who spend most of their four-year cycle in obscurity.

A few, such as Rebecca Adlington and Chris Hoy, will probably become millionaires on the back of their successes, but the vast majority are happy just to be able to do their sport full-time.

The most they expected post-Beijing was to appear on television programmes such as Ready Steady Cook and A Question of Sport. A couple of months after the Olympics, even those offers will be drying up.

So let them enjoy their day in the sun on Thursday because then it will be straight back to the gym. There are only 1,382 days of training before London 2012.