LOOK, misery and depression one can cope with. It’s the default position, after all. But hope and raised expectation are too much to bear. The notion that England really might be quite good is beginning to settle itself, and comfortably, upon the backs of supporters, thus making us squirm. It has happened many times before these past 42 years, of course.

The first England game I ever saw, on television, was the 1966 World Cup final – although I was sent to bed at the end of normal time. The second Millwall game my oldest son witnessed, in the flesh, was the FA Cup final against Manchester United. We were, for those games, the same ages – six, an age in which one is prone to a certain suggestibility. “Better luck next year, I suppose,” said my lad, with heartbreaking naivety after our 3-0 drubbing, not realising that Millwall’s appearance in the final had been an astonishing singularity, like the Halle-Bopp comet, and would not recur for another 300,000 years. So it was for me and England; the 1970 World Cup would be a doddle because we were, said the press, an even better team than the one that had lifted the trophy four years previously, despite Jeff Astle. The subsequent quarter-final defeat seemed to me merely an awful accident and quite against the natural order of things. It took the next 12 years of sustained uselessness – and the arrival of adulthood – for that default position I mentioned above to assert itself properly.

Which is why, when those terrible moments of hope establish themselves – the ones associated with Lineker in 1986 and Gascoigne in 1990 and 1996, Owen in 1998, Beckham in 2002 – one tries reflexively to brush them away with caveats.

So here are a few caveats, before we put the champagne on ice for 2010. First the psychology of the team, Fabio Capello’s greatest achievement so far. The manager puts England’s failure on the big stage down to fear, which may be partly right. And he may indeed have banished it. But it is also a consequence of complacency and arrogance. That has not been banished entirely, as we saw in the first half against Belarus and even more strikingly in the second half against Kazakhstan. The difference on these two occasions was that England somehow roused themselves again and won each game. But one would rather the arrogance were not there in the first place. Although how the hell you stop Premier League players being arrogant is quite beyond me. I suspect even Freud would have struggled with that one.

Second – we could do with Gordon Banks. Hell, we could do with Gary Sprake. When you are forced to turn for reliability to David James, you are surely in trouble, likeable and occasionally brilliant though the man might be. For 30 years England had the best goalkeepers in the world in Banks, Shilton and Clemence. It is arguable that right now we have the worst of the top tier of nations. Scott Carson, anyone? Or Paul Robinson, England’s Northern Rock in waiting?

Now, the attack. It may be that a combination of Wayne Rooney and Theo Walcott or Gabriel Agbonlahor will provide us with sufficient goals, certainly when playing on the break. But we are still missing a Lineker, a Shearer, an Allan Clarke or even a fit and young Michael Owen; a natural goalscorer whose purpose is to do nothing but score goals. Neither Darren Bent nor Jermain Defoe, good though they are, quite fits the bill. And I have the nagging suspicion that any international team which, as first choice, would put Emile Heskey at No 9 is not going to win a major tournament (and still less a team that places its faith in the equally amenable and self-effacing Peter Crouch).

This may be unfair and, what’s more, wrong. Heskey, whenever he has played for England, has been extraordinarily good. It is no coincidence that most of England’s notable triumphs in the past five years have come when he has been on the pitch. So this is perhaps purest snobbery on my part and I have to admit that nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing Heskey score a winning goal in the final of a major tournament, so willing and selfless is the man. Or score any goal anywhere. That being the point, I suppose.

Then there is the opposition. This run of Capello’s has been truly impressive and England have beaten at least two half-decent teams, the plainly shocked Croatia and a German side going through one of their regular bouts of clunking mediocrity. But our record against both these teams – last season’s capitulations to Croatia notwithstanding – is not too bad. And we always compete well against Germany until the referee signals for penalties. Against teams from eastern and northern Europe, England are usually comfortable, up to a point. It is when those bloody Latins get involved that we suddenly find ourselves undone. There is still a suspicion that England might be overturned by pace and trickery, by the unexpected, by the prolonged application of what is still superior technique. When did we last beat the ghastly French – or Spain, Portugal, Italy, Romania in a competitive match? Still less Brazil (Argentina is different; they hate us so much that, enraged, they tie themselves in knots against England and more often than not succumb).

None of this is intended to detract from Capello’s achievements so far; there seems to be an ease and resolution and confidence about the side that I have not seen since we stuffed the Dutch 4-1 back in 1996 (in a tournament where, remember, we were outplayed only by the Spanish). And that win over Germany last week was more emphatic, in many respects, than that much-remembered 5-1 victory in Munich – a game that, truth be told, could have gone either way. But the long-suffering England supporters – well, we need caveats, reasons to be uncheerful. Add a few of your own, just to be on the safe side.