I am not sure what is the more depressing thing about England’s midweek friendly against the Czech Republic: the witlessness of the football or the surprise and disappointment that greeted the 2-2 draw. Hell, at least we got a point. In the past year or so England have been easily beaten by arguably the weakest team to have qualified for June’s European Championship, France, and beaten twice by the middle-ranking also-rans, Croatia. In case the point needs to be reinforced, we will be beaten by Croatia again within a matter of weeks.

The Czech Republic are mid-ranking also-rans as well, so a draw - however fortuitous and clawed from the bottom of a barrel - represents an improvement of sorts. You would think that by now the message would be getting home: we are of no use whatsoever. We’re s*** but, incredibly, we still don’t know we are.

It’s not the manager - although, to be fair, if Steve “Goldmember” McClaren had picked such an antediluvian and conservative side as the one which faced the Czechs, he’d have been well and truly pilloried - it’s the players, stupid. They’re not very good. I do not understand why people fail to grasp this simple and self-evident point. If they were any good, they would win matches against half-decent opposition from time to time - but they do not remotely threaten to do this.

If it were the fault of the manager then the performances of the team would surely have changed between Sven, Goldmember and Capello - but they have not changed at all. They stay resolutely the same; torpid and bereft of imagination in midfield, spectacularly toothless up front and regularly prone to acts of self-harming at the back.

The remarkable thing, these past three years or so, has been the exemplary consistency with which England have played - and its corollary, the desperation with which you and I yearn for a set piece during England games, knowing all the while that there is no pace or guile in the team with which to upset a defence from open play and our only salvation lies in bullying someone from a corner or one of David Beckham’s increasingly rare unstoppable free kicks. Beckham, incidentally, was probably our best performer for 50 minutes against the Czechs - that’s the David Beckham who, effectively, no longer plays competitive football for a living.

The counter argument to this supposes that there is something dark and mysterious that grips hold of the world’s most brilliant players - Gerrard, Fat Frankie, Wayne Rooney, Rio, the lovely Ashley Cole - whenever they pull on an England shirt. Gilded and mesmerising at club level, they suddenly become shadows of themselves, afflicted perhaps with the weight of great expectation. I’ve bought into this rot before now, largely through wishful thinking; but rot it is, nonetheless. Rooney has been scarcely more effective at club level these past three or four years, still less Ashley Cole.

To buy into the familiar and widely held “mystery” thesis you must also buy into the surreal economics and overweening hype of our Premier League, a place where Frank Lampard is deemed to be worth £150,000 per week rather than fifty quid and maybe some vouchers for Garfunkels when he performs adequately. Steven Gerrard, I would grant you, is a decent enough player (although not when he is wilfully played out of position in order to accommodate The £34m Man), but he is pretty much alone in the current England team as being someone whom you might even remotely consider “world class”. Rooney certainly seemed to fit that description three years ago and before that Beckham and - albeit briefly - Michael Owen. Not any more; players change, they gain experience but also they often lose something along the way - in Owen’s case, simply but crucially - pace and fitness.

But this process, of losing something, has happened most spectacularly to Rooney and, I suppose, it is sad. But ask yourself: when did Rooney last play really well for England? Against Turkey in October 2003? When, last season, did he dominate top-class opposition for Manchester United and turn a match around? The argument often levelled at Cristiano Ronaldo - that he fails to perform on the big stage - could be levelled at Rooney with far more justification. On paper, we are repeatedly assured, the England team is magnificent, but it really isn’t. Our best midfield player cannot beat a man and has no pace; none of the current crop of forwards have a tenth of the lethal guile or panache of Shearer or Lineker or even David Platt. And we have, uh, David James in goal.

England managers, when they are appointed, plead for patience - and then, understandably given the clamouring demands of press and public, start planning for the very short term. When Fabio Capello was appointed it was on the back of a supposedly calamitous aberration - that England had not qualified for Euro 2008 not because the players were useless but because Steve McClaren was an imbecile. Now, I yield to no one in my dislike for McClaren, but this was only a quarter of the truth. England failed in their efforts to qualify for Euro 2008 because they were indeed bloody useless - not simply tactically (although that is true as well) - but properly, man for man, useless; around about on a par with Israel. It was not bad luck or bad management that resulted in England sitting out the finals - it was an entirely accurate reflection of where we stand in the international game right now. And if you doubt that, look at the results over the past three years and then tell me it isn’t so.

Capello has a reservoir of credit and goodwill, only a gallon or two of which will have been dissipated by the capitulation to France and last week’s routing - in everything but the score - by a mediocre Czech team. He could usefully build on that by insisting that the slate must be wiped clean, by pointing out that all the available evidence suggests that the current England side is simply not good enough, even if Jesus Christ were the chief coach. He could deflate expectation by arguing that the next World Cup is too soon for any realistic chance of English success and that England should begin preparing now for the 2012 European Championship by blooding the likes of Ashley Young, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Micah Richards, David Bentley, Theo Walcott and others. Hell, I’d even reserve a place in my side for Jimmy Bullard.

Instead, Capello seems captured by the weight of expectation, that a little tinkering around the edges and a newly imposed discipline will suffice. Croatia should expunge that notion from his head, if Andorra don’t do it first.

- LONDON has been warned by the IOC that it does not ‘own’ the 2012 games - a shot across the bows of Lord Coe, one assumes, who said this week that we would not attempt to outdo Beijing. The Olympics is already costing Britain £10 billion and unfortunately for the IOC such spending, in a democracy, must be transparent. There are all sorts of ways in which Britain will fail to match Beijing’s spending; a rather less lavish opening ceremony, for example. And a disinclination to nobble the judges in the taekwondo and boxing will save a few quid, too.

Anthem turns the Tartan Army bitter

THE TARTAN Army - the world’s most joyful and good-natured football fans - have been busy enhancing their deserved reputation by booing the national anthem in a game against Northern Ireland. They object to the words of God Save the Queen because it is “too closely associated” with England. Also, there is an oblique reference somewhere to thoroughly bashing the Scotch - although only in a verse which was last sung in about 1745 but which, I reckon, we should reinstate for future sporting events, in order to keep our neighbours alert.

Various Scottish football websites were bombarded with Tartan Army correspondents giving forth to unrestrained antiEnglish bile and insisting that the anthem would be booed. They were all - so far as a cursory examination of the posts reveals - called “Jimmy”. Scottish football supporters have always been treated rather leniently by the press and especially those Scottish football supporters who append their loyalties to Glasgow Celtic, rather than Glasgow Rangers. Celtic fans were not chastised by Uefa for their antiEnglish and pro-IRA sectarian chants and songs, which were considered an example of, uh, vibrant and very real folk music. The bluenosed Rangers fans have been hammered for their own pipe-tootling ripostes, however. I assume it is the former contingent who have expressed disaffection at hearing the national anthem, rather than the Rangers lot - but equally, I don’t suppose Fifa will have a go at them. Maybe all Scotland matches in future should be preceded by someone singing Donald Where’s Yer Troosers and have done with it.

Hugh McIlvanney is away