ALAN SHEARER’S punditry helps to explain why England won’t win the World Cup next year.

Analysing Sunday’s match between Everton and Tottenham on Match of the Day 2, Shearer eulogised about the form of Aaron Lennon, which he put down to the fact that the winger was no longer trying to pick out his team-mates with his crosses but was simply putting the ball in the box and hoping Tottenham’s strikers could reach them. (This itself is worrying. Lennon is, after all, an established England international).

But about a minute later, Shearer, in a bizarre volte-face then praised Everton’s Seamus Coleman for how well he played, in particular for the way he picked out a blue shirt when he was delivering his crosses.

It was enough to make you feel sorry for Joey Barton and the rest of the relegated Newcastle team, whose future career paths hung on Shearer’s ability to understand and then respond to what was happening on the pitch in front of him. It turns out they never had a chance.

But the real issue here is that if such a successful footballer who is often touted for a role working with our brightest and best has no idea about the basics, how can England’s current batch be expected to compete against the world’s most technically-proficient countries?

Interesting interpretations were not reserved just for the Match of the Day couches. David Moyes’ contention in explaining why Tottenham’s blatant penalty should not have been given was even more comic.

He said: “Someone will always get there before somebody else. That’s part of football. If it’s outrageously badly timed then it’s a penalty kick.

“But I don’t think it was outrageously badly timed.

“It was a harsh penalty kick.”

Unfortunately for Moyes’ version, that’s not how the rules of football have been encoded and interpreted for more than a century.

If the attacker gets to the ball before the defender and then gets body-checked, it’s a penalty kick. Or rugby.