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Captain's Blog - Thursday 7th June 2012

A number of people have said to me recently that England could go well in the European Championships because expectation levels are at an all time low. My response to this is, what has expectation got to do with it when the players are simply not good enough to compete with the elite of the football world? It is the presence or absence of technical ability and team ethic that wins or loses tournaments. Expectation manifests itself as pressure and pressure only really plays a part on those teams that get to the final stages of a tournament and that is an unlikely scenario with England. There are six Liverpool players in the squad and given their form this season the presence of these players is hardly a recipe for success. They are also missing their best player - Wayne Rooney early in the tournament and those first two matches will be crucial. I would love them to do well to shut people like me up, but just because they are 15/1 to win the tournament rather than 5/1 does not make them a better side than they actually are.

As far as my selection today is concerned I am interested in Captivity at Wolverhampton. He runs in the 3.10 and brings previous course form to the party. Mirco Demuro who many have latched onto as being a fine jockey now is on board and you can expect this strong galloping type to bowl along in front as he did when just being touched off at Beverley last time. Plenty of people have become fans of Mirco Demuro recently, ever since he started booting home a few Mark Johnston winners in the north. It seems amazing to me that they did not join his fan club when he won the Dubai World Cup on Victoire Pisa for that was a ride of sheer class. Such is the rather parochial view some have of this great game of ours.

Many thanks to all of you who sent mails to the studio last night. We managed to garner some interesting debate about what makes a horse great. That question is of course impossible to answer, but history has told us that versatility is a vital part of the ingredient in greatness as is the ability to win races under adverse circumstances. We also provided you with some split screen analysis of the Derby and Oaks and threw in the Coronation Cup as well. This type of analysis is always revealing and showed that the Fugue has loads of speed, that St Nicholas Abbey has a blinding turn of foot and that Camelot, although winning the Derby, could have been even more impressive if he had been ridden closer to the pace.

I am writing all of this whilst I sit in a garage waiting for a new wing mirror to be fitted to my car. At some point last night somebody smashed into my wing mirror whilst my car was parked up. They did a good job of completely destroying every bit of it. Of course they did not leave a phone number or note, a sad indictment of this world that we have to endure.

All the best.

Todays Selection

3.10 Wolverhampton - Captivity (each-way)