Joe Root says England must show some fight

Idk, I think 06-07, England arriving as "firm favorites" is an exaggeration. This is the first time in AGES (in Oz) England has been deemed as firm favorites prior to the Ashes series.

I thought Lil Joe did show a lot of fight ........

I already said what lil Joe name really means... Root!

England is getting it quite wrong but they need not panic.

Joe should have gone on and the team management moved him to 6 so he develops and then chucks him back at 3. Makes no sense whatsoever.

During the 3-0 home series victory, England never really dominated and for a few reasons the shoreline seems a comprehensive series victory, but it was not.

Their top order failed miserably and continues to do so. A lot of England's victories were based on solid knocks from Cook and Trott. Now they are failing, England becomes exposed.

Pietersen is a concern as he really lacks consistency.

I simply cannot see England coming back from this, especially when Perth favours the Aussies.

Agreed. And they really escaped from a lose narrowly in the first test too. Also I'd add Bell to the mix. I doubt if they're heavily reliant on Trott though, he's done squat for a while. I think KP, despite being inconsistent, has done much more than Trott in contributing to their wins (Ton vs Lanka and India, esp. the India one was one of his best knocks on a rank turner).
I would say it's more of Mitch's top form coinciding with their lack of form. You can't expect Root, Carberry et al to walk in and starat scoring against quality pace like that.