England 2 Czech Republic 2

Last night Fabio Capello and England played their fifth and final international friendly match before next month’s World Cup qualifying games against Andorra and Croatia. But the excitement and expectation that followed Fabio Capello’s appointment as England manager as all but evaporated after yet another poor England performance that lacked skill, innovation and anything like a suitable formation or shape.

The England team was very similar to Steve McLaren’s final eleven, so perfectly understandable that the performance was as poor as the Croatia game. England were simply unable to defend against the counter-attacking football of the Czech Republic.

The same old problems were very visible. Players playing out of position (Steven Gerrard on the left and Wes Brown right back) and for the first time it appeared Capello had reverted to the Ericksson & McLaren problem of using a formation to accomodate the “star players” rather than picking the best players for the correct positions.

When asked why he played Gerrard on the left, Capello looked defensive and said he hadn’t. The formation was apparently a 4-3-2-1 with Gerrard and Wayne Rooney tucking in behind loan striker Jermain Defoe!

I’m pleased Defoe has had a run of games for England. I have always considered him to be a good striker who needs a run of games, but he most definitely needs a partner to feed off. I’m expecting the Peter Crouch / Jermain Defoe partnership at Portsmouth to be a success this season. If so, then that would be the obvious first choice for the England attack.

And what was David Beckham doing chasing the game whenever he gave the ball away, which was far too frequent. In the build up to the first Czech goal, Beckham was on the left wing!

It was like watching school kids play over the park with jumpers for goalposts.

Furthermore, why was Wes Brown picked ahead of in form right-backs such as Glen Johnson and Luke Young. Neither are that amazing but they are the best players for that position, for that formation.

I won’t even start on ‘can Lampard and Gerrard play together?!’

Capello’s honeymoon is well and truly over, and England only learnt one thing from yesterday’s friendly international, they are still not that good and on this performance don’t deserve to qualify for the World Cup in South Africa.