It is not only John Terry who will have to audition for his England place. The message that is becoming increasingly clear from those who have met Fabio Capello as he travels around the country and acclimatises to English football is that any number of positions in the national team are up for grabs.

Capello’s most recent selection may have restored a few old favourites to the starting lineup – and would have included one more had Frank Lampard not been ill – but it does not mean that the trial period is over. Quite the opposite. Capello has not started on how England play. Right now, he is more interested in who can play and that is going to leave a few members of his squad with a big decision to make this summer.

This England manager does not have 40 years’ appreciation of the domestic game. He has none before January, in fact. Everything he does is based on recent experience and a player who is not in the starting lineup for his club cannot be assessed.

Take Peter Crouch. He was, by many accounts, Liverpool’s best player against Arsenal on Saturday, but he started only because Rafael BenÍtez was keeping his powder dry for the Champions League quarter-final, second leg against the same opponents tomorrow. Between England’s match against Switzerland on February 6 and the game against France in Paris on March 26, Crouch started two matches for Liverpool. The last of those was on February 16, so in the 5½ weeks before Capello’s second match in charge, Crouch was on the field for 53 minutes. Capello’s people saw more of David Beckham – and he was playing on another continent.

Theo Walcott, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves, Wayne Bridge and Michael Carrick, take note. The days of the bit-part England player are over. This guy wants players he can see. It may not have benefited Jermain Defoe yet, but his decision to leave Tottenham Hotspur for Portsmouth was the right one if he has England ambitions.

It is interesting that a return to Fratton Park could be one of the options available to Crouch in the summer. The loss to the elite clubs will be the rest of the Barclays Premier League’s gain if the England squad wakes up to the fact that no player is going to conquer the world under Capello from a berth on the bench, or from Liverpool’s reserve team.

Ramos spurred to act

Increasingly, as he watches matches, Juande Ramos, the Tottenham Hotspur head coach, has a similar look on his face to that of Fabio Capello. It says: this lot are rubbish, where can I get some others? The difference is, Ramos can.

When power corrupts

There really should be no surprise at the allegation that FC Porto fixed two matches in the domestic league during the 2003-04 campaign. It is what can happen if one club are allowed to become supremely important. When José Mourinho was at Chelsea, he told a story to the club’s director of communications, that in Portugal there was a journalist who was openly hostile to him, and when he agreed to write a column for his publication, it was on the successful condition that the critic was removed from his job. He seemed perplexed that such pressure could not be exerted in England.

Later, when Chelsea had a difficult European match preceded by a tough league game, Mourinho insisted the domestic schedule should be altered, as it was in Portugal, to aid teams playing in Europe. Again, he could see no wrong. There is no suggestion that Mourinho was involved in corrupt activity and his recollections may have been exaggerated to make a point, but Porto were in a uniquely powerful place in Portuguese football, as were Juventus in Italy, and that is never healthy.

Arsenal’s Anfield goal

With a first-choice team available – bar the injured Robin van Persie – Arsenal have failed to score once away from home this season. Liverpool are said to have the edge in the Champions League quarter-final, but my hunch is that Arsenal will score tomorrow evening and Liverpool will need to do so twice if the match is not to go penalties.

Out with the old . . .

Cardiff City have revealed the name of their new stadium. It is to be called the New Stadium. If there is a better idea out there, I am yet to hear it.

Lowe opinion of himself

Planning a takeover, a statement from Rupert Lowe, the former Southampton chairman, and Michael Wilde, the leading individual shareholder, set out a bold vision. “It is now time to reintroduce common sense, leadership and clarity to the decision-making process if a crisis has any chance of being averted,” it read. Is there evidence of this leadership? Why, certainly.

On May 15, 2005, writing in the match-day programme, Lowe issued a similarly bullish endorsement of his methods. “It is always easy to forget the progress we have made as a club over the past decade when the first-team results go badly,” he wrote. “Our academy has continued to flourish, our community and educational activities have made progress, our shop is doing well, our match-day and non-match-day catering is the envy of other clubs, our radio station has made great progress and, above all, our match-day staff are all committed to ensuring that our supporters enjoy their match-day experience to the full.”

Clearly, this is a man with a firm sense of priority. And if that day had not also marked the club’s first relegation season in 31 years, what a golden age of fancy pies, local broadcasting and efficient turnstile operation that would have been.

A loan again, naturally

If, as seems likely, Birmingham City stay up, a huge part will have been played by Mauro Zárate, 20, the Argentine who arrived from Qatar during the transfer window. It will also, in all likelihood, be at the expense of Bolton Wanderers, so what goes around comes around.

Zárate is not Birmingham’s player and is unlikely to become so permanently. He is owned by Al-Sadd, who want £18 million for him, and as Karren Brady, the Birmingham managing director, said this week: “I don’t think so.” It could be that Bolton go down and Birmingham survive on the wit of a player who is passing through our game.

This, though, is how Bolton stayed up in the years when Sam Allardyce, their former manager, played football’s ludicrous loan system like a Stradivarius, so no doubt it is fair.

A Galaxy far, far away

Not for the first time, David Beckham let the cat out of the bag last week. Speaking after the Los Angeles Galaxy lost 4-0 to the Colorado Rapids, he said: “It is always going to be tough when you travel after international games. It is tough when you are in England, then trying to adjust to the time difference over here.”

So, if the travelling makes it hard for him to function for the Galaxy, why does Beckham always claim that it has no effect on him when he plays for England?

Grant aid necessary

One of Arsène Wenger’s wisest decisions involved keeping Pat Rice, a man who knew Arsenal inside out, as part of his backroom staff. It allowed him to gauge the mood of his surroundings, to tap into its DNA when he was finding his feet in English football. Avram Grant, at Chelsea, looks likely to lose his equivalent of Rice this summer, when Steve Clarke departs. The potential for a Champions League exit at the hands of Fenerbahçe should not be all that is troubling the Israeli.

Ronaldo: rest his case

Cristiano Ronaldo did nothing wrong in the Olympic Stadium on Tuesday. It would serve AS Roma’s whining players right if he was rested for the return leg at Old Trafford, therefore putting into perspective the gulf in class between the teams.

No need to get shirty

Credit to Graham Poll, the former referee, for highlighting the foolishness of the law that makes a booking mandatory for a player taking off his shirt during a goal celebration. Referees should use common sense and ignore it, but as Poll observes, they cannot choose which parts of the rulebook to apply. The result is that officials are held in even greater contempt.

A player, on achieving the high point of the game, should be able to celebrate in any way he likes, provided that he does not provoke a riot and keeps his trousers on. Referees know this, too. It is time Fifa brought an end to this stupidity.

Cup of good cheer

The most refreshing aspect of the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday was the atmosphere around Wembley. The biggest clubs have had a monopoly on these events for so long that we have forgotten what it is like without them. In terms of the ambiance, it was better. Supporters of the elite four are so used to the occasion that it leaves them unmoved and all that matters is the result. There is little joy in the occasion unless their team win, so the mood is often pensive or fractious.

For the followers of Portsmouth and West Bromwich Albion, however, a match at Wembley was a big deal and they were going to celebrate it regardless. Before the game, the feeling was one of excitement. Afterwards, even the disappointed Albion supporters appeared to be taking home some good memories.

Tony Adams, the Portsmouth assistant manager, thinks that as the priorities of clubs change, there will be an increasing number of surprise contenders for FA Cup glory. He said that the only thing to stop it was the idea of Michel Platini, the Uefa president, to award a Champions League place to the winners, which would bring it into the sights of the richest clubs again. That appears to have been resisted for now. Let us hope that sanity prevails.

Brooking no argument

Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football development, is frustrated by his lack of influence at the highest levels of the game. When the Professional Game Board (PGB) meets to decide on the distribution of £11 million for grassroots football, Brooking is not allowed in. He knows what to do, then: walk.

To lose a man as well respected as Brooking – or even to have that threat – would be a huge embarrassment to the club directors that sit on the PGB, particularly because he would be within his rights to go public and explain the circumstances behind his departure. By doing so he could bring about serious change and do more for youth football in this country than £11 million from the PGB ever could.

2012 and counting

Midweek matches at the Emirates Stadium would truly be spoilt if the final whistle was not followed by a detailed announcement of the transport chaos that has consumed the area. Wednesday was particularly good, with several Tube lines closed, stations out of action and passengers invited to walk to the nearest available point of departure, which was, by the sounds of it, Birmingham New Street.

This, the smooth progress of the Wembley project and the faultless opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow can only bode well for the London Olympics, due to take place some time between 2012 and 2047.