Well, that did not last long, did it. Fabio Capello took one game and roughly two months to work out what most Barclays Premier League managers have known all along. There is no cavalry of fabulous, gifted young England players coming over the hill to save us.

Capello’s best, indeed his only, chance of World Cup qualification is to take the same group of players who failed so dismally last time out in the European Championship and try to do more with them than his predecessor, Steve McClaren. It is a depressing assessment by the Italian, but at least an honest one. He has not wasted time pandering to egos, kidding us that there is a sunlit future beyond the tarnished golden generation.

As Capello’s modus operandi is to announce his final squad of 23 on a Saturday night without explanation, much like a tablet of stone, nobody can say for certain why the youth team missed the cut, but it does not take the mind of Cicero to work it out. Gabriel Agbonlahor has scored one goal (against Wigan Athletic) since November 24. Ashley Young’s form has also suffered as Villa have won two games since January 12. Shaun Wright-Phillips is a byword for inconsistency at Chelsea, while David Wheater’s inclusion in the extended squad of 30, like that of Curtis Davies last time, was always destined to end in disappointment. The performance that Capello saw from Jermaine Jenas in Tottenham Hotspur’s 5-1 win over Arsenal in January was not typical after all.

And nobody can complain. If anything, Capello’s squad should contain even fewer surprises, as Jermain Defoe is surely in better form than Theo Walcott. As for the team, if Capello plays to his strengths and uses his favoured 4-2-3-1 blueprint, there should barely be a fresh name in it.

David James; Glen Johnson, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole; Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry; David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Joe Cole; Wayne Rooney. I would like to see Michael Owen tried as the solo striker in one half, with Rooney behind and Gerrard moving out to Beckham’s position. And if Gary Neville was fit, Johnson would not get a look-in.

Whenever the England team fail there is a call for radical reform, as if change automatically brings improvement, but Capello has exploded that myth. When he named his squad on Saturday, 16 of the 23 names went to the World Cup with Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2006.

Take Beckham. McClaren rightly dropped him for playing as if in a comfort zone under Eriksson, but a series of replacements have fared no better. Now Beckham is back in contention on merit and had he not made the mistake of going into premature retirement with the Los Angeles Galaxy, there would be little debate that he is England’s best option on the right flank, provided that he is revitalised by the challenge.

Go through the team and it is the established names that are pushing for reevaluation. With Owen out of favour, have any of his rivals produced form that would make them irresistible in Capello’s eyes? No, it is Owen who has caught his attention, particularly if he saw his performance for Newcastle United against Fulham, as intelligent as it was effective. A month ago, Capello was strongly contemplating using Agbonlahor as a lone striker; now he cannot get in the squad.

Look at the past few weeks of Premier League action and it is the old guard who have risen to the challenge of impressing the manager – Gerrard in his new role behind Fernando Torres at Liverpool; Lampard scoring eight goals in nine midfield games going into this weekend; Joe Cole with a scintillating performance against Tottenham on Wednesday. Capello is holding auditions for the captaincy, but who would bet against him eventually handing the armband back to Terry?

So meet the new boss, same as the old boss. This 23 could have been selected by McClaren, down to the inclusion of Stewart Downing. And these are the right choices, too.

For if Capello is worth £6 million a year, it is because the FA believes that he can take exactly the same group as the last guy and work miracles with them. And, by the look of it, if he is to live up to his salary, that is precisely what he is going to have to do.

Money talks loudest

Chelsea’s arrival in the FA Youth Cup final for the first time in 47 years will no doubt produce the standard sneers about buying success. It is worth noting, however, that the outstanding player for Aston Villa, their beaten semi-final opponents, was Harry Forrester, an England Under19 forward, signed from Watford for a fee that could rise to £2 million. All the big boys are at it, you know; not just Chelsea.

Daish can say ‘blog off’

Having led Ebbsfleet United – the club owned by members of the MyFootballClub website – to the FA Trophy final, Liam Daish, the manager, must be eagerly anticipating the day when 29,000 online experts tell him which team to pick. He is surely worth a job at a proper football club next season, at which point he can leave them all to it.

Official rocket science

Keith Hackett has taken television experts to task for not knowing the offside rule. The man in charge of Barclays Premier League referees believes that match officials have been wrongly maligned by former professionals who are ignorant of recent changes in law. To make future judgments easier, he has set out the new rules in layman’s terms. Here is an excerpt: “Is the player interfering with an opponent’s ability to play the ball, by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision or movements, or by making a gesture or movement which, in the opinion of the referee, deceives or distracts an opponent?”

Got that? What I think it means is that a linesman no longer has to call on a straight line, but rather, in a split second, mentally place himself in the position of the defender and work out how the position of the attacker correlates to his ability to get to the ball, while judging whether the actions and intent of the attacker are deceptive or distracting. No grey areas there, then. No potential for confusion. If Hackett genuinely finds that uncomplicated and easy to apply, he is wasted in refereeing. He should be in the space programme.

Bolton sold on trouble

Bolton Wanderers were on the fringes of trouble. Then they sold their best player, Nicolas Anelka. Now they are in trouble. One question: what about this surprises them?

North-South divide

There is unrest at Newcastle United as Dennis Wise makes his mark as executive director (Saturday matinees). Fevered reports suggest mounting disquiet among the locals that so many decisions are being made by – wait for it – southerners. Oh yes, it is southerners who are to blame. After all, things were going so well under good, honest, northern lads such as Sam Allardyce, Graeme Souness, Freddy Shepherd, Kevin Keegan . . .

Knight errant

Sir Bobby Robson, the former England manager, believes that Ashley Cole should be dropped by his country for his poor behaviour against Tottenham Hotspur last week. What he does not adequately explain is why the national manager should lose an important player for an incident over which he has no control. And why Fabio Capello should agree to have his team picked by a committee of moral guardians applying a code of conduct that does not exist in club football. Cole’s discipline in an England shirt is a matter for Capello What he does in a Chelsea shirt is the responsibility of his employers.