England's World Cup: An Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to this new feature, the University of Bedfordshire World Cup 2014 blog. My name is Alex Lyon, an extremely keen footballer who likes to think he knows a thing or two about the game. I personally enjoyed a great three years at UOB, studying on the Sport and PE BSc course, where I was taught/lectured by some fantastic lecturers and made some great friends along the way. Throughout the tournament I will be reporting on several themes of the World Cup on a regular basis, from the perspective of a student and bringing my thoughts to you.

Well, today is the day of reckoning for England! A massively important match against Uruguay, a team who before the tournament started were being tipped as a 'dark horse' by many to go on to lift the trophy in Rio on July 13th. After the opening game defeat against Italy, despite a very promising performance, England need a positive result tonight and I for one am very optimistic about our chances, especially if the fast-paced, attacking football that we saw at times on Saturday night is played again, and if Wayne Rooney, the man who seems to be the scapegoat for the media of late, can pull out a performance that we all know he is capable of! I'm sure many others will feel the same and agree with me that our young stars, such as Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling will play a huge part tonight as well.

I must say, despite my confidence, I am still very nervous about the game purely because of the players that Uruguay have in their stellar strike-force, Edinson Cavani and Liverpool's Luis Suarez. Keep these men quiet and we should have enough ability as an attacking outfit to get those vital three points, easy right? Well tonight we find out if Roy and the boys can find the way to do so, which I thoroughly believe they will do.

Hopefully this time tomorrow we'll all be feeling a lot better about England's chances of ending the '48 years of hurt' and lift the coveted Jules Rimet, but for now its time to sit back, enjoy a beer or two and let the drama unfold!