Fabio Capello in his favoured Black & White 4x3 format

England manager Fabio Capello today insisted that it is High-Definition Television that is largely to blame for England’s untimely dip in form and dismal 0-0 draw against Algeria last night.

“The higher resolution today makes it much harder for the players, every pass has to be pixel perfect – there is no room for error in today’s high-definition game”, the £6million-a-year coach claimed.

It is true that the England football team preferred the now obsolete 4×3 television format and first floundered in the Euro 2000 championships when Widescreen 16:9 became the established standard, England failed to go beyond the group stages in that tournament and have been under-performing since.  “We like-a to play narrow with high ball over the top, but-a-the widescreen gives us too much width and it’s too low, too flat” said the stern 64 year old Italian stereotype, “In my playing days it was not so complicated, everything was black & white” .

England striker and Shrek look-a-like Wayne Rooney however disagreed with the manager’s position claiming that the “stunning colours and vivid detail” afforded by HD TV helped him pick out the ball more easily and made him a better player for it, he also asserted that the ability to pause and rewind live TV facilitated tactics “a bit like American football”.

Looking increasingly like a puppet from the Dolmio adverts; Capello went on to claim that the unfortunate introduction of 3D television just in time for the World Cup also didn’t help his players as they didn’t have the 3D glasses for it – so everything looked a bit blurry round the edges.

England face the might of group leaders Slovenia on Wednesday in a must win game, in preparation they are planning to train at a variety of resolutions and screen sizes as they don’t know what  television is like in Slovenia.