Mike Jennings.co.uk

... and good riddance.

This is my 100th post! Since January. That's really not good at all - I should post more.

Anyway.

Watched the game the other night and, my god, what a dismal performance. The first half was, sadly, typical of recent England games - especially since our nice run of 3-0 victories, mostly against the minnows of our group, fizzled out.

What I don't understand is that, when the 4-4-2 formation was starting to come to some sort of fruition - Barry and Gerrard in midfield linking up especially well - he decided to change the system for a crucial match. I'd like to have been in his head for the moment he decided to abandon a relatively successful system for an untested one that paired together two midfielders that everyone in the country knows can't play together.

It was the usual boring, static, tedious, tentative and nervous-looking England performance that practically invited the opposing team - that's any opposing team, even the tiny countries we should be dominating - to attack and try to score. I also don't understand playing Scott Carson. Sure, Robinson is in a bad vein of form - but he has international experience. Third choice goalkeeper David James is (mostly) over the mistakes that earned him his calamitous nickname, and also has oodles of experience. Putting a 'keeper in for a debut in such a crucial match set himself up, really, for a fall - which came in the 8th minute.

He should have saved it, but I do feel quite bad for him. The rest of the team didn't help, and he made a couple of decent stops later on but, crucially, he should have had the first shot. A Sunday League goalie should have had the first shot.

Changes had to be made and the decision to bring on David Beckham was - as many of his detractors will barely admit - almost a masterstroke. He charged around the pitch, pinging his trademark passes and looking, despite his lack of fitness, a class apart from the lacklustre millionaires who fill up our squad - and look bored about being there. At least Beckham, for all his money, is the only one of them who looks bothered about pulling on the three lions. He sprinted to corners, track back and tackled, worked up and down the wing. I couldn't see any of the rest of the team doing that. Statistically, he covered more in his 45 minutes than any other player did in that amount of time - and would have been the most active player had he taken part in the entire match because he possesses an attribute that the rest of the team - along with any technical skill - seem to have lost: the stamina to play for a full 90 minutes.

Talking of the lack of skill compared to our opponents, imagine the second Croatian goal. Three English defenders dallied around the attacker, scared of even attempting to dispossess him. He wasn't even in our penalty area and yet, no tackles were to be found. He managed to squeeze a pass through the striker who deftly took the ball around Carson and passed it into an empty net. Compare this to some of the English players: badly controlled balls, over-hit passes, tame shots. Steven Gerrard was terrible all night and still pranced around the pitch like Captain Fantastic - which is, clearly, Beckham's role - trying to inspire the team to instill some passion into their performance. I think he should find some first. Frank Lampard was named Man of the Match for scoring a penalty - because I can't think of what else he did during the 90 minutes to win this accolade.

Beckham, again, was the difference, sparking the revival after half-time by injecting some much-needed pace into the English attack, which is the sort of pace that the team should always play with. Fit or not, playing in the MLS or not, I couldn't see any other player in the squad delivering the kind of cross that Beckham did for Peter Crouch to control and awkwardly poke home - especially not his replacement, Shaun Wright-Philips. Incidentally, the Chelsea winger's father, Arsenal legend Ian Wright, wrote in his newspaper column that he favoured Beckham to start the game, and I entirely agree. Who cares if he's the wrong side of 30 and playing for LA Galaxy to support his wife's fame habit: he's the best right winger, the best set-piece taker, the best passer and the best crosser in the squad, and surely an asset like that can't be ignored. I hope he gets his hundredth cap and I'll be glad when he does.

I'm also glad that we haven't qualified for the European Championships. It would have been nice for the team to go, but I'm almost certain that it would have merely produced Eriksson-like performances of stunning, mind-blowing mediocrity that would have seen us to the quarter-finals and then dumped out, with plenty of time and money wasted. It can be claimed that the squad, and McLaren, has been unlucky with injuries - which is a fair point. But none of the players in the team, whoever they are, should seem so bored and lifeless on the field when representing their country, whether first-choice pick or not.

Now we have the chance to bring in someone who should be managing the national team - someone dynamic, intelligent, exciting and full of passion for the team, the fans and the job at hand. I'd prefer it to be an Englishman - I'm hoping for a radical new name like Alan Shearer who, I've heard, really wants the post - but doubt that Boring Brian Barwick would go for something that would ruin England's style of coma-inducing football. I'd even be willing to have a foreigner take the post if they were the right man for the job, so that wouldn't be a problem.

I just hope the FA learn from this and appoint someone decent, relatively quickly - as opposed to spending three months chasing 'Big' Phil Scolari around the Mediterranean and then claiming that McLaren was their first choice all along. The squad needs to be revamped - hell, the whole system needs to be revamped. The performance against Croatia and, to be honest, throughout the whole qualifying campaign, has been pretty dire - so the changes have to start soon and be drastic.

I just hope someone has the grapefruits to make the right decision down at Soho Square.