Danny Mills joined Saturday's Off the Ball to preview England's World Cup chances with the tournament fast approaching.
Raheem Sterling has come in for unjustified criticism in some quarters of the English media over the last number of months culminating in widespread abuse for a tattoo of a gun on his leg last week.
Former England international Danny Mills can't believe why it's front page news and hopes it brings the squad together ahead of the tournament. "I don't think there is extra pressure from the media to go out and preform," he told Eoin Sheahan, "But I think what we have seen this week is when players are appearing on the front page, for what I see as absolute nonsense, for a tattoo which has very, very special meaning to him. It's unfinished and he has his own personal reasons for it - why is this on the front page?
"There's people demanding that he should be dropped from the England squad, demanding that he should have it covered up. I mean, have we been through all David Beckham's tattoos? Brad Pitts tattoos? Whoever it is - rock stars and all their tattoos and say 'this is ridiculous, there's a knife on it so that might encourage knife crime' - it just seems a bizarre world that we live in and people are desperate to complain about something as soon as possible.
"It can sometime turn into a siege mentality - I think that's happened before Italia '90 when Bobby Robson was in charge at the time and the England players refused to speak to the media and went 'no, we're not going to speak to the media - we're getting criticised for this, we're getting criticised for that'... and they just said this is going to be siege mentality!'"
England begin their World Cup campaign against Tunisia on the 18th June.
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