I suppose getting frustrated by a sensationalist, negative, non-story in The Sun is almost as pointless as the piece itself, however it was annoying to spot half its back page on Friday was devoted to running down England's training pitch in Portugal.

Under the massive headline 'Roobish' (the invention of which by a thrusting young sub-editor, one suspects, was pretty much the justification for the running of the story), The Sun claimed that Wayne Rooney had "slammed' the quality of the training surface at the Vale de Lobo resort.

Further reading, which amounted to one single column on the inside back page, only the first paragraph of which pertained to this 'slamming', reveals the whole thing is based on something Rooney might have said to a fan - reported second-hand by The Sun.

According to the paper he said to a supporter, "The pitch isn't great. It's a bit spongy in places. It's a bit small, there's only one pitch. I'm used to training on four pitches at Manchester United. Here there is only one." And that's the sum total of the slamming. Woah! Calm down Wayne! If you even said that.

Now not having been to the Vale de Lobo myself, I am of course unable to give a first hand account of the state or otherwise of the pitch. Having scoured all the regular news sources and Twitter though, I have found no other mention of a poor quality playing surface.

If when the rest of the England team arrives there today for training, we are inundated with negative reports, then hats off to The Sun for being first there with their exclusive. But if we don't hear anything, it's the insidious nature of planting the thought in the general public's minds that our top players are training and playing on 'bad pitches', therefore leading to under-performance and failure, which I find most objectionable.

We all know that is far from the case - so let's hear it a bit more in the mainstream media.

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