2 places below France

Football rankings are a strange thing

A team wins 12 games in its entire history and rises to 17th in the world

Another team crashes out of a world cup with one goal scored, struggles against Belarus, Norway and Austria in the same period and is ranked 15th

Which is stranger? I ask you

Anyway, the fact remains that Montenegro, who were below Wales 18 months ago, were placed in the same pot as the French, and somehow we have got them again, only this time as second seeds as opposed to fifth...

I can only conclude that their impressive results weigh heavily due to their lack of competitive history, and that teams outside the top 20 really are quite bad

You would think this would be a good thing, avoiding teams like Russia, Serbia and France to play a small, familiar side who are unlikely to remain consistent

But alas, no, ever the pessimists we despair at being drawn with both hosts of the 2012 European championships

Really?

While Ukraine are certainly not the easiest team in the pot, and they did, as Capello pointed out, beat us before South Africa - we had already qualified at the time, and they haven't slipped to 45th for no reason (admittedly one being no competitive fixtures due to hosting) - they have won two games in the past year

It's clutching at straws - either we get a ridiculously easy group and we find it boring, or seem arrogant, or we don't and say it's difficult

How about we just say it's pretty decent? Would you really feel that much better had we got Switzerland again? They were also a decent side a few years ago, qualifying for more tournaments than Ukraine ever have, but their collapse in this campaign means we ignore that for some reason

Ireland, Czech Rep, Bosnia or Israel all would have provided a similar issue - it's the middle pot, and frankly any team would have done, Ireland would've been nice, but possibly a bigger problem

Truth is we should qualify, just as we should qualify for 2012 (and will) and just as we qualified for 2010, despite the hand-wringing

As for Poland, despite a decent showing prior to 2008, when they took top spot from Portugal, they really aren't a threat these days - by seeding standards they were the lowest available from pot 4 - would you really care if it was Romania or Bulgaria (Scotland)? Fact is, we got the lower ranked sides from every pot except Montenegro - and that could be seen as inflated and is a team we know

The less said about Moldova and San Marino the better

Nope, if there's anything to worry about it's the quality of England, not the opposition, the other Home Nations are the ones with the worry

Scotland and Wales did reasonably well being together - more chance of one being through, Croatia, Serbia and Belgium is hardly the group of death - I doubt either will come through, but it's much better than a five team group with Spain, the Dutch or us

Ireland get a tough break with Germany, but that's always likely to happen - battling it out with Sweden for second is probably a better prospect than their current campaign for 2012

Northern Ireland probably got the worst luck - Portugal and Russia are likely to dominate

Elsewhere, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain are all handed pretty straightforward groups (the only three I would rank as in any way better than ours)

France, for once, received some bad luck and are now trading on Spain possibly not being so good in the next two to three years...right

Group G for 'Greece', again shows the farcical nature of the rankings - how can a team that has won one match in a major tournament in seven years,  be a top seed - they are a self-fulfilling prophesy - they win 2004 so they get ranked highly, get easy draws as a result and continue to qualify because they never face opposition - what an amazing group as Slovakia and Bosnia battle the mighty Greeks for top spot...

Group E is just as bad for non-entities but frankly Norway deserve their position after sticking it to Portugal and being screwed out of the play-offs in 2010 qualifying

My predictions for European teams going straight to Brazil

Croatia, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, England, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia (that's my frivolous one)

Play-offs:

France, Ukraine, Greece, Russia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ireland, Denmark, Serbia - obviously one will miss out, but I'm hardly going to call it

Anyway, enjoy