No sooner had the final whistle blown at Wembley on Wednesday than the doom-mongers and insane optimists were out with their polarised views of England’s World Cup chances.

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between and the bookies have our chances about right at a general 20/1.

We have a decent spine to the team in Joe Hart, Steven Gerrard in his deeper role and a revitalised Wayne Rooney up top.

Leighton Baines is a revelation and we have a few talented youngsters coming through who Roy Hodgson doesn’t seem scared of trying out.

But we still lack a world class right back and centre half pairing, midfield creator and second striker.

Not being seeded means England will face a struggle to get out of the group.

Let’s not forget in South Africa last time we scraped out in second place from a group containing the mighty USA, Slovenia and Algeria.

If we do reach the knock-out stages Hodgson will keep us compact and look to hit teams on the break or through set pieces.

We’ll have a chance, but 20/1 looks about fair and I wouldn’t get involved at anything shorter than that.

Scare stories about our fans’ safety also popped-up before Hodgson had finished his post-match press conference.

Alarmist headlines screamed out about Brazilian gangsters and lawless favellas.

Since when did England fans start becoming the victims rather than the perpetrators?

I”ll bet that the biggest threat to our fans is overdosing on Brahma beer or getting a crooked neck admiring the locals on Copacabana Beach.

The Premier League is back this weekend and the fixtures feature a lot of short-priced favourites.

It’s been too topsy-turvy a season to put our faith in odds-on chances so let’s have a look at goals in the Newcastle Liverpool game.

This fixture has thrown-up a few thrillers in the past so I like the look of over 3.5 goals at 7/4.

Betting Spy has joined forces with Paddy Power to offer all readers a free bet when they open an account. Just click on the link below to visit construction’s favourite bookmaker to find out all the latest prices and follow the easy steps to setting-up an online, telephone or mobile account

Running Total for all bets this season to a £10 stake: £-46.00