Saturday, July 01, 2006

England midfielder Steven Gerrard says Wayne Rooney should not be made into the scapegoat for The Three Lions' World Cup exit after his sending off against Portugal.

The young Manchester United star's temperament will again be put under severe scrutiny following his dismissal for an apparent stamp on Portugal defender Ricardo Carvalho.

The incident was reminiscent of David Beckham's dismissal against Argentina in 1998, and the game was to follow the same course with England battling bravely before succumbing yet again to penalties.

Beckham suffered heavily after his own lapse of judgement, but Gerrard believes that Rooney should not be targeted in the same way and no blame should be attached to the striker.

"Wayne has been fantastic for us," said Gerrard.

"We can't blame Wayne. He has done so much for this team and he is going to do so much for this team in the future.

"I haven't seen Wayne but when I see him I will give him a big hug because he is my team-mate and he is getting no blame from me because I love him.

"I thought it was a melee and I walked away from it thinking Wayne was going to get a foul in his favour.

"He had two or three men all over him and I can't believe he never got the foul before whatever happened kicked off.

"There is talk of him stamping on someone. I'll have to have a look at it but you guys will make your judgement on it."

Gerrard, along with Frank Lampard and Jamie Carragher, missed a spot kick in the shoot-out as Portugal keeper Ricardo again proved to be England's nemesis following his Euro 2004 heroics.

The Liverpool man was distraught following England's exit and admitted that Portugal were too good from twelve yards.

"I am feeling a bit numb at the moment. I am just gutted for the fans and my team-mates that I never scored the penalty but for the whole match we gave everything we had," Gerrard added.

"When we went down to 10 men it was backs against the wall. It was a hard grind and hard work and I have never felt so tired in a game in my life.

"We did so well to get to penalties and then we weren't good enough and I take responsibility for my penalties.

"I thought we were going to go on and win it but their penalties were better than ours at the end of the day."

England's players were left in floods of tears as Sven Goran Eriksson's reign came to an end in Gelsenkirchen, and defender Rio Ferdinand expressed the squad's acute disappointment at yet another penalty failure.

"To lose on penalties again is sickening but the lads put a great effort in," said Ferdinand. "It just wasn't to be.

"We didn't falter with 10 men. Even with 10 men we were the team who created the best chances.

"In the second-half we had about three half-chances and decent chances which we didn't manage to convert.

"That's the only positive I can draw from it. We were still the more dangerous side."

"We deserved to win today," Ferdinand continued.

"It wasn't as one-sided but it was almost like the FA Cup final against Arsenal.

"They never looked like scoring a goal although they had a lot of shots from outside the box - but they won the game."

Great Red North @ 7:58 pm

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