Owen Starting To Have Doubts

"We're part of it, we're English, we're football fans at heart and it hurts us as much as anyone," he explained. "You question yourself, you question everyone. You look at the other players, you look at yourself and you think different thoughts and come to different conclusions.

"Whenever you think about the game and think about football in general, it's such a game of opinions. Yes, it was just an unbelievable match and I'd like to think it wouldn't or it couldn't happen again if we played them another dozen times.

"You just don't know in football. We can't go out there thinking we're the better team, better squad and everything else. Football has changed a lot. People have to get their heads around that as well.

"It's not like you can go to Northern Ireland and beat them five or six nil even if you're playing really well. You're seeing so many shocks these days. Obviously, Greece won the European Championships and Porto won the Champions League. It's certainly harder to win things nowadays. In saying that, it's no excuse for not getting a result.

"There are so many different things that happen during the course of a game. But after half an hour we were so in control of the game. It normally takes a goal against, a sending off or something to really rattle your cage. For us to play as badly as we did after that opening 30 minutes you would have imagined something had gone badly wrong.

"It was just like we'd gone from playing so well to, all of a sudden, 10 minutes before half-time, playing not so well.

"Towards the end of the game we should have been pressing for that equaliser and they had as many chances as us in those last 10 to 15 minutes. It was a very poor performance and there's no getting away from that. We're not making any excuses and you'll not hear any excuses. It wasn't good enough and we hope we get the chance to put that right."