I watched England’s runaway win over Bulgaria on Monday night and, like everyone, was disgusted by the racism. I have to say that, if I had been England’s captain that night, I would have led the players off the pitch.

That’s not meant as a criticism of Harry Kane and I can fully understand that, with the state of the game at the time it happened and with England so comfortable, the attitude was, ‘Just let’s get this game done and dusted.’

With England being a massive football nation, I believe that walking off would have been a big statement and turning point. It’s not an easy thing to do because it was just a few who were behaving in that despicable way, but I did think that if I had been the captain, I would have walked the players off the pitch.

We have some black players at West Ham and I would feel as though I had let them down if I was in a position of influence and I hadn’t walked off.

I’ve sampled similar stuff when I played for the England Under-21s away to Serbia in 2007 — and it was really bad. We didn’t have protocols to deal with it then, but now we have. I have to say I haven’t heard any kind of racist abuse here for a long time, if ever.

It was also good to welcome back Declan Rice to our training ground after his involvement with England. He has been suffering from a virus for a time, but he’s over the worst and should be okay for our match at Everton tomorrow.

I’ve said in previous columns that, even when it was going so well for Declan, I warned him it wouldn’t always be sweetness and light and that there would be low points and challenges ahead. Two of those came recently, with his handball against Crystal Palace, which got them back into the game from the penalty spot, followed by the England defeat against the Czech Republic and the criticism for him and others which followed.

I spoke to him on the phone the day after the Czech Republic game and even then he wasn’t feeling well.

I also said to him that it’s inevitable, especially with the publicity he’s had, that when things don’t go well, some people can’t wait to shoot you down.

You’re up there on that pedestal and they’re thinking: “Come on, then, make a mistake and we can topple you.”

That’s football. There were times last season when everything he touched turned to gold, but it can’t stay that way. Declan will be fine, he’ll learn from this and I said to him: “This is probably the best thing that can happen to you at this stage in your career because now you know it’s not always a fairy tale.”

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I still remember learning that lesson early in my career. I hadn’t played that many games and everything was going well — until we played Blackburn away.

It was a midweek game and, to be frank, I remember I was shocking. I sat in the dressing room and thought, “I’m not cut out for this level yet.”

I can also recall a time when I had scored two goals for England Under-21s against the Republic of Ireland and when I came back, Sky Sports did a big piece on me before West Ham’s next game, against Sunderland. It was at Upton Park and I had a nightmare. That taught me an invaluable lesson. The pressure had built in my own mind, I was trying to perform as well as I had done against Ireland and I couldn’t handle it. I don’t worry about Declan. I am sure he will play at the top level for the next 10 years, if not longer.

The home defeat by Palace, just before the international break, was particularly hard to take. West Ham teams in which I’ve played have lost loads of games, but as I said to the manager the other day: “That one really did hurt because, had we won it, we could have been third in the Premier League table.”

The way it happened made it even more galling. We’d scored one of the best goals I’ve seen since we moved to the London Stadium, but then came that handball by Declan, followed by a late Palace winner, originally ruled out but then given after an age by VAR.

It was one of those games where I thought we’d had no luck whatsoever.

We’ve now had two similar VAR decisions — one also at Bournemouth — which have gone against us. Maybe we’re due one to go our way, but my only real issue is the time it took to come to a decision with the one against Palace. It took almost two-and-a-half minutes for them to decide that Jordan Ayew was a couple of millimetres onside and — for me — that’s too long.

I do believe there should be a time limit on making tight decisions such as that one before deciding that it’s not clear and obvious — and sticking with the original decision.