McClaren blames ref

England slumped to a 2-1 defeat having appeared comfortable when a goal up, before a contentious penalty decision hastened England's demise.

Wayne Rooney was penalised for holding back Konstantin Zyrianov, but replays showed the contact was some way outside the box.

Roman Pavlyuchenko scored the spot-kick and four minutes later snaffled the winner after Paul Robinson failed to hold and Alexei Berezutski effort.

However, rather than focus on his side's abject defensive display McClaren chose to focus on Medina Cantalejo's penalty decision - even though England's goal stood despite being scored from an offside position.

"We had it. It was in our grasp and we've ended up losing it. I've just seen the penalty again. It's an absolute disgrace. It's outside the box," the manager said.

"The linesman didn't give it. It was the referee from quite some distance. Things like that turn games. We were comfortable. They were running out of ideas and that just turned the game.

"It was a mad four minutes after that and unfortunately we conceded a second. But I can't fault the players for the gameplan, the way they've endeavoured to work, the commitment, the blocks we got in, the headers."

"We've ended up losing a game that really, after 70 minutes, I never thought we'd lose."

McClaren however said the much-hyped synthetic pitch had no bearing on the result, adding: "The pitch had nothing to do with it. It was lively. They had more preparation, but I'm not making that an excuse."

England's fate is now out of their hands. They will not qualify if Russia win their matches in Israel and Andorra, while McClaren's men have no choice but to beat Croatia at Wembley next month.

"Obviously it puts us in a bad position. It's out of our hands. We've got to rely on Israel getting a result from Russia next month and then we take it from there," said McClaren.

"We're not giving up. We'll take it to the end. It's a tough place to go, Israel. Russia, the pressure's on again. They have to go and win. They've still got a lot of work to do."