• We don’t have any goalkeepers who are not proven to be accidents waiting to happen. James, Green, Foster, Robinson. OK, so there is the untested Joe Hart.

• We don’t have any defenders who are fit or in form. Johnson, Ferdinand and Cole all injured. Terry playing like he has his pants down around his ankles half the time. Replacements (based on Capello’s selections so far) would be Brown, Lescott, Upson and Baines (since the useless Bridge has withdrawn). Other possibilities for left back from the squad might include Barry or Milner. Slightly more left of field, literally as well as metaphorically, would be Warnock and Phil Neville.

• I’m not convinced by our midfield or our formation and tactics playing two wide players and two central midfielders. Lennon is injured, Walcott is recovering from injury. Beckham is fit only for 15 minute cameos. So, Milner looks like he will start on the right and has shown lots of energy and drive. Gerrard seems to be the notional left-sided midfielder now. Barry is the holding midfielder and he has played well for England in that role over the last two years since Steve McClaren put him there. But he looks a shadow of that player now. Lampard is our ‘creative’ attacking midfielder. The same player who can disappear for an entire 90 minutes despite his massive size.

• Although we have one of the best centre forwards in the world in Wayne Rooney, Capello seems to insist on pairing him with one of the worst centre forwards in the world in Emile Heskey. Sorry, but likeable as Emile is - and he tries, I know he tries - he is not up to it. If we are to play with two up front then I’d stick Gerrard in there. Rooney has proved this season beyond any doubt that he can play alone up front provided he has:

1. Service from wingers who can get to the byline and cross the ball on to his head.
2. Support of two midfielders who - in addition to their defensive and creative duties - can bomb forward to give Rooney the space he needs.

Unless Capello surprises me and changes his tactics, formation and line-up I just can’t see it happening.

It’s often the case that what in one sense is an undeniable strength can at the same time also be a real or potential weakness. English football’s great history and tradition raises everyone’s expectations, yet the English football team must compete on an increasingly commercialised and sophisticated international playing field. We have more fans, more money and more foreigners in our game than any other country, so it’s no surprise that when things don’t go to plan, everyone feels quite upset and let down. And the media does its best to blame anyone and everyone.

There’s such a lot at stake, now. It was only sixty years or so ago that the Football Association, which is now grieving over the financial loss of failure to qualify for Euro 2008 and stating that qualification for Euro and World Cup Finals is a minimum requirement of the team manager/coach, actively prevented the national team from taking part. It’s only forty years or so since we won it. As it happens, Sir Alf Ramsey, like Second Choice Steve McClaren also failed to qualify for his first Euro Finals in 1964…. We have a long history and fine tradition of coming up short against the rest of the world, so it’s not as if it’s anything new or that we should be surprised about.

The problem with English football has been documented in the press as being anything from too many foreign players, too much money, expectation of fans not matched with reality, players and coaches not good enough, not enough passion or care, too much passion and not enough technique, too much pressure and fear, too much drinking and not enough team spirit. The reality is probably that all of these factors are important to a lesser or greater degree.

Too many foreign players

As Sven-Goran Erikkson points out, managers often buy overseas players because they are cheaper on average than their English or British counterparts. That’s also why so few of our players play abroad - because there isn’t the money to pay them, not necessarily that they aren’t good enough. Beckham was and arguably still is good enough to play for Real Madrid. That’s why there are too many foreign players.

Too much money

So part of the problem may be that the players get paid too much? But that is not the players’ fault, just market forces, mainly to do with Sky TV money and, er, the FA, who contract with them for Premier League (the same FA which hijacked the Football League) and England rights. What this means is that the very best English players - who are on a par at least, with the very best players in the world - are paid significantly more. This is why Arsene Wenger has so few English players in his squad, not because they aren’t good enough, but because they are too expensive.

The new Scotland

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that we are repeating what happened in Scotland during the Graeme Souness era at Rangers - he bought lots of foreigners in, Celtic and others later followed suit and the Scottish national team suffered as a result. I’m not the only one who thinks that England are the new Scotland.

The recent Scottish revival has surely been due to Rangers and Celtic developing a core group of home-grown players to complement their foreign signings. And I’m sure that a lot of their England based players can’t wait to get a game for Scotland after watching too many games from the stand or playing for less successful clubs!

Overpaid English players

At club level, Arsenal are successful in part at least because they have a salary structure which prevents them buying overpaid English players, but keeps team spirit up - see how much better they are doing without the overpaid Henry! Same with United to a different extent. Fergie’s discipline is what he buys by paying top wages and Ince, Kanchelskis, Beckham, Van Nistelrooy and Keane are all examples of players who reached their sell-by dates, for the team’s eventual benefit. Chelsea pay everyone top wages, of course, while my guess is that the likes of Liverpool, Newcastle, Spurs and any other under-achievers get the balance wrong between wages and value.

Too much pressure

But there’s more to it than that. Michael Owen says that the players can’t cope with the pressure of playing for England now, not that they don’t care. Although at some point we have to admit that other teams are sometimes better than us, that would certainly explain some lacklustre performances and results. Where does the pressure come from? The fans? The media?

My opinion is that the fans want England to win, or - if they can’t win - to play well, trying. The media just want to sell stories, and their marketing strategy is the time-honoured sensationalism of even the most mundane non-news (Steve McClaren under an umbrella. OK, so he looked a bit daft, but, if he kept dry and we’d won…).

So, we lost to Croatia. What we should all have been saying was congratulations to Croatia on a deserved victory and let’s support McClaren in rebuilding for real this time instead of picking on every little thing and waiting for him to fail. Things looked good against Russia and Israel, he stumbled across a “system” (Gerrard and Barry) that worked. He was unlucky with injuries, but should have been given longer.

Is an all-foreign Arsenal bad for English football?

But if all our top teams are made up of non-Englishmen….