England have a *good* U21 team with players who will cut it at the senior level. It’s good managerial/coaching talent that England desperately lacks. And rather than moaning about not getting the breaks they should perhaps take the trouble to learn French/Italian/Portugese/Spanish and spend some time abroad to see if they can learn a thing or three. Fair play to Chris Coleman. More of that spirit is required.

I agree that the English approach needs changes, I just worry that the culture of overreaction will provoke splashy but ultimately counterproductive changes when the situation calls for dull, studied, technical, farsighted ones. I don’t know enough to agree or disagree with it, but I was fascinated by Martin Samuel’s argument that English youth players are made to play on full-sized pitches far too early in their development.

I think that’s the kind of thinking that needs to go into any possible reform, but at the same time, technical changes in youth development aren’t going to calm the frenzy. A lot of people want to see someone punished right now, I think, but reform based on that kind of emotional calculation is only going to lead to more trouble down the road.

Trenttoffee – Not necessarily through the radio, but something like that happens to me every week. It’s like driving past a car crash. You know it’s wrong, but you just can’t not slow down.

At the same time, I think there is root & branch reform needed in English football. Not of the kind most people blather on about (foreigners and all that), but there is a reason why our record in international football has been abysmal for — well, ever since we entered the World Cup for the first time in 1950.

Compare our record in the WCs and ECs to comparable European nations, and we’re desperately grateful for Spain’s amazing incompetence.

We have plenty of players good at something, but we’ve never had much idea how to play as a team tactically, and part of that is that we do not have strength in depth technically. We need to take a deep breath and start from the bottom.

Sure, we have enough good players that we could conceivable eke our way to a semi-finals again. International tournaments are something of a lottery. But there’s a reason why we always fall just short.

At one and the same time, we need less hysteria but more actual reform. Which is weird.

On Friday night I did something that normally I never do. I listened to some pundits on the radio discussing the current “crisis” in English football. Listening to one pundit in particular was like hearing the audio equivalent of a Roy-Keane-veins-on-the-neck-bulging rant. It was nonsense. I couldn’t turn it off. I hated myself.