BILLY BUNTER

Weblog: The football punter

Young Lions should give patriots a boost

WITH a lack of decent action to talk about over the last couple of days, the football news agenda has been dominated by 'poppygate'.

It's all been a bunch of poppycock as far as I'm concerned, but I'm glad a bit of common sense has won through in the end, and that Fifa have thrown England the smallest bone possible by allowing them to wear a poppy on their armbands.

The intervention of Prince William and David Cameron has clearly been key, if only we'd had the foresight to send them begging to Fifa when we were bidding for the 2018 World Cup.

It was interesting to see a bunch of the England players take to Twitter to voice their displeasure at Fifa's initial decision, but I don't predict this new-found patriotism will last long on their part – my over/under spread on how many of them bother to sing the national anthem is still down at 3.5.

Anyway I've been suckered in by this wave of patriotism and will be backing Stuart Pearce's Under-21s to smash their Icelandic counterparts.

The fact that Sammy Ameobi, who has only one first-team goal to his name and initially chose to represent Nigeria at Under-20 level, is a late addition to the squad in no way dampens my enthusiasm.

Psycho will have them revved up to the max, and I expect the Young Lions to win four or five nil.