Viva Espana

Good luck to Spain against Germany - they'll need it.
That said, the tournament pre-favourites have looked dire, but generally only when Torres is starting.  As soon as he's taken off, they come to life.  The benefit of having a mobile frontman in Villa and a creative but steely  Fabregas in support seems to liberate them, mainly in the way England would have benefited with Rooney up top on his own.
Torres is yet another of the big guns who've been piss-poor - Torres, Ronaldo, Rooney, Kaka, Messi.  The top five players in the world at club level, and they've been shockingly out of sorts.
Torres does not look fit, does not look motivated, does not seem to have the belief of his colleagues.
Make sure that you don't start with Torres, Del Bosque, now will you?

Woy of the Pool

Good appointment by Liverpool.  Very smart.
Woy Hodgson is a nice bloke, intelligent, eloquent, multi-lingual, and an achiever. Despite his poor spell at Blackburn, he's achieved everywhere he's gone.  He turned Fulham from relegation fodder to the league position that Liverpool finished this season just gone.  Then a Europa Cup final playing the opposite of the sort of football Rafa Benitez played in the Champions League.
But he's got a big challenge on.  He's just lost one of the few decent players - Benayoun to Chelsea on a Free - and he's only got a report £15m to spend.
Not wishing to come over all Football Manager, but Woy has some simple choices to make:

1. Sell Gerrard, Mascherano and Torres - that'll net £100m, probably.
2. Ship out Benitez' duds - Kuyt (who is astonishingly having a good world cup, so might go in group 1), Lucas, Arveloa, N'Gog, etc (to the power of a million).
3. Spend whatever you get left over on decent players.

Easy.

I hate Liverpool, but I wish Woy luck there.

Expectation

A similar post to the previous one - what is expectation?
32 Countries go to the World Cup, and each one has an expectation.
There are duffers like New Zealand, Algeria and North Korea (and my native Scotland, should we ever qualify again) whose expectation is that they'll go out first round, without a win.  Exceeding that expectation - scoring a goal, winning - is easy, you might think.  Paraguay are the greatest example at 2010.
The middle-ranking nations - Ghana, Slovenia/akia, Australia, US, Mexico, Uruguay - all expect a gallant run to the second round, not necessarily getting there, and being pumped by the group winner and the second round opponents.  That is easy to manage - qualify for the second round.  Uruguay are greatly exceeding this. Ghana should be
The so-called big guns, though.  Okay, I'll list them:

• England
• Germany
• Spain
• Netherlands
• Italy
• France
• Portugal
• Argentina
• Brazil

All of these nations have an expectation that they would win the World Cup.  Add in Uruguay, and that's 10 countries for whom anything less than the semis is abject failure - sack the coach, ditch the team.  Of those, two went out in the group stages, two in the second round, two in the quarters, so six nations have abjectly failed.  However awful England were, they and Argentina lost to the current favourites, the Germans.  Arguably, only Brazil, Germany and Italy have the history, and Spain the current squad and form, to have such an expectation.
Looking at the (flawed) FIFA rankings the following expectations are obvious:

• Brazil & Spain - finalists
• Netherlands & Portugal - semis
• Italy, Germany, Argentina & England - quarters
• France & Uruguay - 2nd Round

So there is over-achievement - Germany & Uruguay - and underachievement - England's is not as abject as Italy or Portugal.  (Portugal were incredibly lucky to get even that far, they were abysmal - Ronaldo looked lost, Queiroz shared the incompetence of his predecessor at Man Utd.)
A final point - England were used to Quarter Finals according to the press.  The Euros' Quarters are equivalent to the World Cup second round - 16 teams start the tournament, not 32.

Capello

So, the Team England suits have given Capello a stay of execution. Interesting.

The pros to the decision are obvious -

£6m a year = £12m payoff,

they wouldn't be able to replace him with anyone with as good a CV - Woy's gone to Liverpool, Dave Redknapp's in far and away the biggest job of his career now, not got the track record of Capello, and the tabloids seem to have forgotten Big Sam's dreadful record at Newcastle (either way, he's not an international manager, is he?).

The cons - a poor World Cup.

Okay, so losing to the only decent team in the World Cup is not bad, at whatever stage of the competition it's at. Germany, for all their lack of big time, big name players, are the only good TEAM I've seen at the World Cup. England's formation was all set around accommodating the stars - Lampard and Gerrard - into an unbalanced midfield. Germany lost their star - Ballack - and have reaped the benefit of letting Oezil and Schweinsteiger free.

To have any hope of any glory, England need to focus on youth. There were good youngsters in the squad - Milner, Johnson, Dawson, Hart - and more outwith, albeit underperforming - Walcott, Johnson, Young, Agbonlahor, Taylor, the Everton boys, and Micah Richards, who seriously needs to move.

If Capello doesn't ditch the old guard, then he deserves to go.