It was sad to see the England under21-s fail to get to the European Championships final.

As ever Germany turned out to be a very difficult opponent, with most of the talk even before the game over whether it would go penalties. Of course, that’s exactly what happened.

Unfortunately two of our team missed, one of them being Nathan Redmond.

Pictures at the end of the game showed how downcast he was and the morning after I happened to be in an airport waiting for a plane, and was surrounded by football supporters of many different teams.

Their main questions to me were ‘how do you handle a player after a situation like that?’ I have to say my reaction to all the headlines about the penalty being missed for me is they are inaccurate.

When we think of Chris Waddle his penalty was missed because it was off target.

I would sit the player down as soon as pre-season training started and say ‘you didn’t miss the penalty, the goalkeeper saved it. The headlines in Germany would not be about your miss, they would have been about his saves.’

Obviously he has to have some praise because it was an excellent save, so let’s get Nathan back on to a positive footing to look back over a successful career so far when it comes to playing at the younger England levels.

He is probably one of the few out of that squad who we will hopefully see in the full England team in the future along with James Ward-Prowse.

But as I’ve said before, what about the rest of the squad?

At one time they would have automatically have been looked upon as future internationals and would have without a doubt all be seen in the upcoming season on the TV playing for their club’s first teams.

We know that in the case of the players from last week’s semi-finalists, the Cup winning under-20s and the Toulon team, most will go back to play in reserve teams or be sent out on loan.

Chin up Nathan. Everyone is proud of what you have done so far and the fact that their goalkeeper had a good day shouldn’t detract from your ability, and always remember you didn’t miss. He saved.

  • Going back to the manager we once had, Mr Puel, it has to remembered he did take us to eighth position and a good day out at Wembley so the message the outside world imagines is ‘follow that Mauricio.’

But as we all know down here, it’s not so much that but ‘please play some attractive, attacking football.’

While we know defending is a vital part of the game, it’s not the whole thing, and people work hard to find enough money to come to every match hoping to go home talking with excitement about the goals, the near misses, the shots, the many passes etc.

It will be interesting to see the reaction of the players to the new manager because some of them will undoubtedly have felt sorry for the previous boss, even though financially he will not have any worries.

The new manager will have to win players over as soon as possible, bearing in mind the numbers in the squads these days are more than double what they used to be.

One good thing for the new man was the fact that Les Reed came out with a positive statement this week that none of the players who have been linked with being transferred will be leaving the club.

Well done Les, that was a massive boost because we have become famous over recent seasons for brining players in at one price and moving them on for a big profit.

Les has intimated that that is now not the situation and any players going will only be ones who the club think they can do without.

I can understand the agents, who of course have become an integral part of the game, not being too happy as obviously when their player moves they make more money, and with all that rubbish about Mr van Dijk going on strike it should be remembered both the player and agent were delighted when they were given a six year contract only a year ago.

Surely the message will have got home by the beginning of the season to forget the gossip and the rumours and pull together to give the new manager a big welcome on the first day of the season.