England end on a poor note

And so another football season comes to a close, and it ended, for Englnad, on a pretty gloomy note. The performance in the 2-2 draw at home to Switzerland in Saturday's Euro 2012 qualifier was poor, to say the least.

Excuses of tiredness; some lame claims that they had done well to come back from 2-0 down, can't disguise the fact that a home draw against the Swiss is simply not good enough.

There was some respite in the group as Montenegro could only draw at home to Bulgaria, and so missed their own chance to claim top spot ahead of England.

So what's wrong with England? People like to blame the manager and his tactics ("too cautious"). Tiredness has been blamed. Apparently England players averaged 46 games to Switzerland's 31. Yet, Glen Johnson has missed half the season, as has Rio Ferdinand; Milner's not a regular at Manchester City, and Scott Parker has missed several games for West Ham. For Switzerland, Senderos, Djourou and Behrami all played in the Premiership last year, so I'm not sure about that stat.

It was supposed to be a good thing that Ferdinand and Terry were back together in central defence; that Wilshere was playing; that England played 4-3-3 (4-5-1, take your pick). They were all "good things" until Switzerland took a quick-fire two-goal lead in the first half. The recovery to grab a draw only partly disguised the dismal performance.

Top passers in the England team were John Terry (71) and Rio Ferdinand (57). Why? Because they spent most of the game passing to each other! Why? Because there's little or no significant movement ahead of them. They are then left to chip the ball forward (England's disease) and possession is lost.

We have no thrusting midfielders; none who can make a 20-yard run so that our possession is in the middle of the opposition half rather than in the middle of our own (indeed the Swiss had several who could do this: Shaqiri and Xhaka being two); none who slip quietly into open space in dangerous positions (like Xavi or Iniesta of Barcelona); none who can play quick one-twos to open up the opposition; and, more crucuially, none who can instantly control a ball and be ready for the next pass or move immediately. They call it technique and they've been going on about it for years, but nothing improves.

I think England fans live on in (blind) optimism that things will get better, but really they know they won't. We want England to be good, but we don't really believe they are or can be.

Teams like Switzerland are better than we are.