After the football came a sport we really are good at: the blame game. But then you might say that we have had a lot of practice. Steve McClaren paid for England’s failure with his job yesterday, but hard questions were also being asked of the men at the top of the football pyramid in this country.

In turn, at least one of the suits was pointing his fingers at the players who were hailed as potential world-beaters by the FA only a few years ago. “I’ve been brought up over the last few years believing that this was the Golden Generation,” Lord Mawhinney, chairman of the Football League, said. “But I have to tell you that if this is the Golden Generation, the sooner we move away from the Gold Standard the better.”

It was a scripted line from a practised politician and, while it may bring some cheers from a disillusioned public, what the fans really want to know is what is being done to improve the England national team.

It was all well and good for members of the FA’s board to face the media yesterday in a rare show of unity – Geoff Thompson, the invisible chairman, not only appeared in public but spoke too – but the country wants to hear more than apologies, however sincere.

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

• More

• Post a comment

BACKGROUND

• O’Neill rules himself out of running

• Same old routine for Barwick and Co

• £2.5m for worst English manager

• English game paralysed by fear of the unknown

BACKGROUND

• The contenders

• Defeat puts paid to hopes of £2bn bonanza

• McClaren's epitaph: ‘Worse than Graham Taylor’

• Former coach faces fight to rebuild reputation

BACKGROUND

• From 1 to 11: why number was up for England

• Beckham is the blueprint by which to rebuild national game

• Talisman expects backlash but is not retiring

• Carson hoping to bounce back

BACKGROUND

• Wembley authorities unable to explain quagmire

• England were a shower but I’d do it all again

• Time to support the other red and whites

• England got what they deserved, says Corluka

BACKGROUND

• England among also-rans in World Cup seedings

• Players’ egos responsible for failure, says Keane

• Own Goal

Multimedia

• Vote for the next England manager

• England's ten lowest moments ever

• England fans: let off steam here

Related Links

• Beckham is the blueprint by which to rebuild national game

• Talisman expects backlash but is not retiring

It wants to know what is being done to improve standards, not only of the flagship national team but on school pitches, and why the game’s two major organisations, the FA and the Premier League, are deadlocked over something as vital as youth development. The fans want to know why the Sports Minister tiptoes around these organisations instead of knocking their heads together.

As Sir Dave Richards, chairman of the Premier League and professional committee man, put it yesterday: “There is a problem with the system.” But who is going to cut through all the self-interest?

One thing that the board could agree on yesterday was the dismissal of McClaren, which was such a formality that it did not require a show of hands at the breakfast meeting at Soho Square. The hierarchy then decided to empower Brian Barwick, the FA chief executive, to take the lead role in the search for a new head coach. Inevitably, there will be fresh questions about whether a former television executive is equipped to choose an outstanding England coach but, before he spotted Arsène Wenger for Arsenal, David Dein was a sugar importer while David Gill’s preparation for running Manchester United was to control the finances of a travel company.

It is not Barwick’s background that should be under scrutiny but his judgment, and this is a massive test of it after the ludicrous committee process that ended up with McClaren being appointed two years ago. “It’ll be significantly different to last time,” Barwick said, by which he means that he will hope not to get caught sneaking into an Oxfordshire manor house to conduct interviews or flying to Portugal to offer the job to Luiz Felipe Scolari. This should be a more covert, slick operation, but Barwick will still have to pass his recommendation through the board.

England do not have a competitive game until next September but, ideally, the chief executive will want to get his new man in place before the friendly against Switzerland on February 6.

Barwick suggested that he would consult leading managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Wenger, while he is also likely to rely on a couple of board members, including Gill. “I’d be stupid if I didn’t go to the best football brains in this country,” Barwick said. “We’ve got to get this right.” The new head coach is likely to be pitched into a revival of the Home Nations’ Championship next summer, when the FA seeks to fill Wembley to make up for the shortfall of around £10 million after not qualifying for Euro 2008.

For some reason, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, threw his weight behind the mini-tournament yesterday. To most supporters, it will seem like a meaningless festival of British failings.

While the new head coach sets about building the confidence of the first England squad to miss a tournament since the 1994 World Cup, the debate will continue to rage about why they fell short. No one is daft enough to believe that McClaren, for all his weaknesses, is the only reason why England will not be in Austria and Switzerland next summer.

Roy Keane, the Sunderland manager, suggested yesterday that it was more a problem of egos than technique and some at the FA concur. The “full root and branch examination of the whole England senior team set-up” announced by the FA yesterday will ask questions about whether the players are too pampered and whether the small army of staff around the camp needs to be slimmed down.

An inquest will be conducted at many levels, from schools to the professional game. One thing that can be firmly ruled out is quotas. The Government is insistent that such a system will not hold up against any kind of legal challenge and, in any case, Richards yesterday clarified the Premier League’s position by dismissing the idea that too many foreigners were harming the national team.

“There are 355 English players in the Premier League,” Richards said. “355 of them. If you look round the clubs, there’s a substantial amount of players to pick from. So you can’t just keep turning to the Premier League. The League can’t always shoulder responsibility for the national team.

“We need to look at the system. Why haven’t we got the best kids in the world, English kids? It goes back a long way and there are a lot of reasons for it. It starts off in schools and I think we’ve got to start looking at how it started, where the decay started.”

These are big themes to be addressed and it was fair to ask yesterday whether some of the men at the top table are equipped to lead the game forward.

It also remains to be seen whether the appointment of a new manager, especially one as glamorous as Jürgen Klinsmann, for example, might push all these vital long-term issues to the back burner.