I can't tell you what a relief it is not to be writing a Johnson-must-go piece. England beat Scotland at Twickenham on Saturday, leaving the victors amazingly in second place in the final RBS Six Nations Championship table, a strange and deeply unexpected achievement. And it means that Martin Johnson stays on as England team manager.

Triumph might be overstating it just a trifle, but all the same, after five horrendous defeats in six games, to finish the season with a couple of wins and a few pretty tries is not nothing. But more importantly, it means that nobody needs to be blamed for anything. That lets me off the job of saying bad things about Johnson, and I'm very relieved.

Not because I know him. Rather, because I don't. Nearest I got to meeting him outside a press conference was to nod to him when coincidence found us at adjacent tables in Brisbane. He was still a player then - playing, as it happens, with his baby daughter, Molly, lifting her up high and then bringing her down as if he had just won her in a lineout. Never showed that side of himself to opponents.

But he has looked terribly vulnerable since he took on the England job. That has been hard to deal with. All our experience of the man is of the exact opposite. We know him as a player, as the never-a-backward-step man who took England to the World Cup.

His stock in trade was the basilisk stare: a basilisk being a creature that kills with a glance. Throughout that epic tournament of 2003, he was the unyielding force that took England to the prize. As a result, I, like most of us, tend to see him as a figure of mythology rather than the usual sort of sportsman with the usual sort of fallibilities and follies.

The nature of that triumph in Australia six years ago created a myth of a superman. Or so it seemed. It changed the moment he took the job of England team manager. At once he became fallible. He had no experience of coaching whatsoever; the appointment was made entirely on the basis of Johnsonian mythology.

Suddenly the mythical hero was a mere man, a man with a vaguely familiar face in a white shirt and unexpectedly dainty cuff links, thumping his suited knees in fury at his team's latest headless-chicken impersonation. His England team didn't play like an emanation of the personal force of a superman, they were just a half-baked bunch of semi-strangers gathered together by a tyro.

The famous problems of indiscipline showed England's vulnerability. When Johnson got into trouble with referees, it was normally for half-killing somebody; the England team he coaches have been constantly penalised for pathetic little misdemeanours. There were errors of uncertainty and they came from a lack of self-belief.

That, you'd have thought, should have been Johnson's strong point. He might be a bit naive tactically to begin with, but surely he'd have what it takes on the emotional side of things. That turned out to be desperately wrong judgment.

So an ugly autumn was followed by three dreadful matches in the Six Nations and Johnson desperately needed a turnaround. It came a week ago against France, and the improvement could be seen in fits and starts against Scotland on Saturday. There were moments when England actually looked as if they knew who they were and what they were about.

It was a flawed performance and they might even have blown it. But they didn't and that is the main thing, for Johnson has discovered that terrible first law of management. As a player you can lose but still take some satisfaction from having won some personal battles. For the head coach, there is nothing but the ugly truth of the scoreboard.

There have been flashes that tell us of what Johnson is trying to do. Surprisingly — although the way a man plays and the way a man coaches are often very different — it has been built around backs with speed and flair and all those things that Johnson wasn't noted for. If England can control the ball and themselves a bit more, they will have what Johnson described, all those years ago at the World Cup, as “the go-forward”. They will need it when the autumn internationals come round again and bring serious southern-hemisphere opposition. If they have the go-backward, then I may have to write that piece after all.