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Despair for England and their backers after Wembley nightmare

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Some very short prices failed to come in for backers of the national team after Euro 2008 qualifying campaign ends in failure

England's ugly defeat at Wembley was not just painful for the fans - it also hammered their backers who had snapped up some very short prices on the Three Lions.

Steve McClaren's men had somehow been backed at the exchange low of [1.01] to qualify from Group E during the campaign.

So from the moment Nico Kranjcar opened the scoring those backers will have had their hearts in their mouths.

England were trading at [1.64] at kick-off to win match but were swiftly out to [14.0] to win when Ivica Olic put Croatia 2-0 up. Nevertheless, those backers still appeared to keep the faith with the odds on qualifying out to a skinny-looking [3.5] even when Russia scored against Andorra.

Then came the fight-back.

Lampard blasted home from the penalty spot to haul his men back into the match and swing the odds back towards the home team - a win trading at [4.8], the draw [2.5], and qualification at 1.6 (8-13)

Soon after, Crouch equalised and those prices tightened once more - an England win trading at [2.6], the draw [1.63], with Croatia out to [8.6]. At that point England were matched at 1.1 to qualify for Euro 2008.

But in truth this was a hopeless, hapless England performance and anyone watching could sense further goals with a Croatian winner the likeliest eventuality. So there was little surprise - but a healthy portion of despair - when substitute Mladen Petric put a 25-yarder beyond debutant Scott Carson to fire Croatia to a 3-2 win.

Russia of course qualify for Euro 2008, which will delight the backers who took the high of [90] on Guus Hiddink's men to qualify.

In total, more than £15m was matched in the match odds market.