Asked to define his taste in music, the late, great John Peel replied: “I just want to hear something I haven’t heard before.” Pretty much the same could be said of the England team who step out for the first time under the guidance of Fabio Capello at Wembley tomorrow evening.

With one of football’s greatest minds steering the national team, followers of England want something they have not seen before. Not in terms of personnel, because that door closed with the injury to the only uncapped player in the squad, Gabriel Agbonlahor. No, what is needed from Capello is a revolution of the mind, a new thought, a new idea, a fresh way of looking at what is available to the England manager that stops us in our tracks, like the opening chords of Teenage Kicks, the single by The Undertones that became Peel’s anthem.

The fact that Capello has ended up with more or less the same squad that Steve McClaren would have picked had he remained in the job – although he would never have been so bold over David Beckham – suggests that his pool of players is shallow. There is no untapped seam to be explored, no band of young tyros that had been overlooked by the previous regime.

Capello needs to get McClaren’s men working in an original way. This could involve a different game plan – perhaps a version of the 4-2-3-1 system that served Sven-Göran Eriksson well at Manchester City earlier in the season – or an established player in an uncommon role, but what the England team have lacked for many years is the element of surprise that wins battles. McClaren flirted with radical ideas but lacked the conviction to execute them, or to carry the players with him when he tried.

The one advantage of headhunting a man of Capello’s stature is that £6 million a year buys a strong mind and a manager who, if successful early on, will have his ideas received with enthusiasm rather than trepidation. Players need to believe. During Euro 96, when Terry Venables switched from a back four to a back three, the team were in his corner. One feels that when McClaren contemplated innovation, nervous glances were exchanged.

Looking at how Capello has set up teams, it is possible to use the same blueprint as Eriksson at City and still include all of England’s best players. If he picks his form goalkeeper, David James will get the nod and his back four may be Micah Richards, Rio Ferdinand, Jonathan Woodgate and Ashley Cole. Owen Hargreaves and Gareth Barry could then be used as a central midfield pair to guard them, with Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Joe Cole played in a higher midfield three. Michael Owen would be the striker. No one is claiming that this is revolutionary, but used as a default setting for England under Capello, interesting possibilities emerge.

If Owen is out of sorts at the moment – and one goal against Middlesbrough hardly makes it the summer of 1998 again, even if it was one hell of a jump – why not use him as an impact substitute and push Rooney forward into the central striker’s position, putting Joe Cole behind, with Ashley Young to the left? Now that Rooney plays higher up the field for Manchester United, the argument that he can only be used deep is surely old hat.

Rooney has outstanding physical presence and, as a striker, will score his share and create for others, too, particularly with Gerrard, Joe Cole and Young given greater licence to join the attack by the belt-and-braces protection of two defensive midfield players. This could be the making of Joe Cole. The void on England’s left has earned him an international career but has short-changed him, too.

Eriksson had no answer to the sinister dilemma until Cole was deployed on that flank by José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager at the time. Yet Cole is not left-footed and his greatest strength is his creativity when going at teams through the middle. He can pick apart defences as perfectly as any player in Europe, as he demonstrated in Valencia for Chelsea by nailing Carlos Marchena in the tackle and striking a killer pass for Didier Drogba, which allowed the striker to score without breaking stride. It is possible to imagine Rooney on the end of that pass, or at the very least utilising the sort of movement in England’s forward line that is always envied when demonstrated by continental teams.

Young is not left-footed, either, but like Cole plays on that side for his club and is worth his chance. Capello has six months of auditions, after all, in which a number of players can be tried, including Aaron Lennon once he graduates from the under21 team.

Considering the length of Capello’s contract, he may also be the last hope of change for another player whose England career has been mired in functionality. Ferdinand – the player the country had been waiting for, according to Harry Redknapp, his former manager, when he first broke into the England team under Glenn Hoddle – will be 30 in November. Unless something goes horribly wrong, Capello will therefore be his final England manager.

Can anyone remember when, in Ferdinand, it was thought that England at last had a sweeper, a central defender who was as comfortable on the ball as Matthias Sammer of Germany? Ferdinand spoke of emulating Sammer but was never given the chance and now few play the sweeper system. Yet at AC Milan, Capello evolved the role, using Frank Rijkaard, a new breed of midfield player-central defender, who either stepped out from the back or held in front of the defence. Gilberto Silva played that way for Brazil, as did Marcel Desailly for France.

Is it possible that in the last phase of his England career, Ferdinand could be similarly vital, playing beside Hargreaves as one of Capello’s two guarding midfield players? This would allow Capello to use two central defenders behind him – Joleon Lescott and Woodgate in the present squad, John Terry and Ledley King when fit – and utilise added width from two breaking full backs, particularly Richards on the right. Barry is not naturally a holding player anyway and Ferdinand is one of the best passers of the ball in the English game. His famous lapses of concentration may also be fixed by involvement in a busier area of play.

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