One David Nugent!

What a night for David Nugent, making his England debut coming on as a substitute with only ten minutes of the match remaining. He then topped all this excitement with a goal. Okay, so it was only a tap in but it counts and he joins the elite club of players who scored whilst making their England debut. I am convinced that if he had joined the game earlier he would have scored more goals, he was a constant threat from the moment he set foot on the playing area and looked more dangerous in those few minutes than Rooney and Johnson had done during the whole game.

He is obviously destined for greater things, if PNE don't make it up and out of the Championship this again this season he will leave and join the Premier League via a transfer, probably to Everton.

Why was he so effective in comparison to the other premiership stars on display? My theory is that the other players in the squad play in the Premiership every week and are not used to facing the quality of opposition that England faced last night. Outside of the premiership there are teams that are low on skill but are dogged in their determination and play in the opposition's faces. Nugent faces these sorts of teams most weeks and can cope with it. He adopts the strategy of running at defenders and making space for himself and unlike Rooney can cope with the rough treament when the going gets tough. His extra yard of pace makes this possible and his undoubted skill on the ball and eye for a goal.

There was another example of this last night, David Healy knocking in two more goals for Northern Ireland against Sweden taking his total to nine so far in the competition. Healy again has not played in the Premiership, after being shown the door by Manchester United he built his reputation in the Championship at Preston North End before trawling the Championship depths with Leeds. Jason Koumas and Gareth Bales, two other Championship stars were also on target for the Welsh last night.

So what is the lesson here for international team managers? A policy for beating lesser European teams could be to field more players from the Championship; players used to a more passionate and dogged style of play and would provide the edge that Messers Rooney, Lampard and co. clearly cannot. Only Stevie Gerard really showed his mettle last night in Barcelona. Perhaps we should save our Premiership stars for the matches when superior skills are required, that seems to be the only way of motivating the prima donnas in the England set up.