This is the moment to establish for all time the place that Steve McClaren occupies in the history of England managers. The question is not whether McClaren was a bad manager, but whether he was the worst to hold the job. And I think, on the whole and taking one thing with another, that he can safely be regarded as such. Farewell, Steve: your epitaph shall read “worse than Graham Taylor”.

McClaren’s brief period in charge was a navigation from one disaster to the next. There was not a blip. It wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t even the strength of the opposition, and that is a key point. Under McClaren, England consistently performed below their potential and there is no more damning fact than that for a football coach.

McClaren’s main failing – and this is the one that puts him stone last in the troubled company of England managers – was that he courted popularity first and success second. This warped priority could lead only to disaster. One decision after another was based on his need to be liked. That made him a manager seeking to avoid blame, and that is the same as avoiding responsibility.

He began his reign by appointing Terry Venables as his assistant, reasoning that the enthusiastic following that Venables still has among certain areas of the press would at once put Fleet Street on his side. Good PR, bad footballing logic. Venables is a busted flush and, thrilled by his unexpected opportunity to exercise power without responsibility, he led McClaren into grievous and, as it turned out, ultimately terminal error.

Expert View

The faults that lie deep within the nation's football will not be cured simply by handing Steve McClaren his P45

Martin Samuel

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McClaren’s first dynamic move was to drop David Beckham. This was supposed to be, after the departure of his former boss and the England head coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson, a signal that McClaren was “his own man”. But he wasn’t. He was, as always, Fleet Street’s man. Dropping Beckham was a populist move. After the disappointment – though we long for such a disappointment now – of being knocked out in the quarter-finals of the World Cup 17 months ago, the country was agog for change, any kind of change that looked like progress. With McClaren, even at the time, the change looked like regress to me. Another of Barnes’s Ineluctable Laws states that only the weak need to make a show of strength.

You judge a manager by his results, not by the PR strokes he pulls. And when the results start to go wrong, everything else goes wrong as well. Now, a manager doesn’t really have a lot to do. He doesn’t score the goals, he doesn’t make the tackles, he doesn’t run about. Basically, he is paid to make decisions. The trouble is that good decision-making needs a clear mind and an unsentimental grasp of facts. McClaren never showed any sign of having either.

There were various highlights. Perhaps the best was his adoption of 3-5-2 against Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, an experiment that gleaned one point from a possible six. That’s what comes of hiring Venables: you get a load of flashy ideas with no substance behind them. You can also point to such selections as Andrew Johnson and Stewart Downing.

Then, of course, with his timing at its populist best, we had the recall of Beckham, which asks the question of why he was dropped in the first place. At the last, with everyone questioning the reliability of Paul Robinson in goal, McClaren selected Scott Carson for the match that might save him. A typically astute PR move, but, alas, Carson, nervous as an oated-up filly, had the mother of all nightmares.

McClaren had his chance and he blew it. That happens. But what is truly unforgivable is that he had a second chance, and he blew that as well. England were out of the European Championship until Israel’s unlikely win over Russia made qualification look not only possible but straightforward. On Wednesday night England needed only a draw to qualify. McClaren contrived to lose.

It is that blowing of the second chance that puts him lower than Taylor. Other England managers have made mistakes, but not so many in so short a time. Glenn Hoddle is pretty low on the list; for his woeful man-management, his breaching of confidence, his arrogance, his contempt for players whose ball skills were inferior to his own – that is to say, all players. But Hoddle at least had his tactical triumph with a goalless draw in Italy.

Kevin Keegan was hopeless, but at least he was man enough to recognise the fact and walked out after telling the world that he wasn’t good enough to do the job. McClaren, however, right until the end, was suffused with delusions of adequacy.

Taylor’s own record is obfuscated by his hilarious role in the infamous documentary – can we not knock it? – but a charitable view shows us a good man out of his depth. McClaren gave rather different vibes. He always felt like – to use Roy Keane’s most treasured term of abuse – a bluffer. He lacked clear vision and understanding, but was unaware of this failing. He relied on bluff and in his heart he must have known this.

So, I think, did his players. Despite the inevitable loyalty of the selected player for the selector, McClaren’s players never played up for him. There was always an air of confusion, of making do, of hoping for the best. There was seldom any sign that McClaren’s team, whatever the selection or the formation, truly felt themselves a power in the world.

It is not that the job is impossible. Eriksson took England to three successive quarter-finals and through three successful qualification campaigns. Of course the pressure is intense, that’s why the job needs a man of remarkable strength, one who is certain of what he wants, equally contemptuous of critics and flatterers, with the nerves of a burglar and a deep understanding of international football.

Such men exist. They are rare, which is why they command high salaries. The pressure is absurd, the criticism hysterical in many countries: we need not plume ourselves on being especially awful, save in our fascination with the sexual lives of footballing men. But what the job demands above all else is a self-confidence devoid of vanity. McClaren had the exact opposite.

This has been a woeful 17 months for English football. It looked like a disaster from day one and so it turned out. I don’t think any of us is in the least bit surprised about that. McClaren never had it: you could see it in the cut of his jib; above all, you could see it in his smile.

His appointment was a bad decision made in a bad way and nothing but bad came of it. Still, at least the disaster was complete: a lucky skin-of-the-teeth qualification would have meant that we were stuck with him for another two years, until England failed to qualify for the World Cup of 2010. Now let us hope for a real manager. I think we deserve a non-bluffer this time.