James Lawton: Eriksson cruelly betrays creativity of Cole

Joe Cole is supposed to be the nearest thing England has to be a genuinely creative young midfield prospect. But after sharing in the nationwide frustration over the gormless performance against Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals as an uncalled substitute at Shizuoka, Cole now finds himself surplus to Sven Goran Eriksson's needs for Saturday's European Championship qualifier in Slovakia?

Why? There is no explanation beyond the disappointing start to the new season by Cole's club, West Ham United, the responsibility for which cannot be heaped entirely on his shoulders. Eriksson has been in the job for 18 months now – far longer than it should take a national team manager to know his best players.

Cole's career descent in the few months since the World Cup is beyond logical explanation. He is bound to be hurt, frustrated and bewildered.

In that last category he is, however, hardly alone. Cole had been called many times but not been chosen for anything more than fleeting appearances in meaningless friendlies. Now he is banished. It is a travesty of team-building – and basic fairness.

Only a literary giant is equipped to describe the Beckham look

David Beckham's forthcoming calendar is apparently going to smash all records, with half a million advanced sales already in the bag.

This may provoke fresh discussion on the bizarre nature of our celebrity culture, but Beckham wants us to know that producing a glamour calendar is not quite the routine matter we might have thought.

Says he: "As anyone who has ever faced a camera will tell you, there is a real pressure to produce the right look. But it's a great calendar and worth all the hard work."

No doubt we will hear a little more of this in Beckham's £2m autobiography, which the former EastEnders actor Tom Watt is apparently the hot favourite to write.

There will probably be much moaning in the literary salons, not to mention those old sports writing waterholes where in the old days a few bob could always be earned writing lines like: "I've had a great journey from the abbatoirs of Aberdeen to the arc lights of Anfield" (Yeats, Ronnie).

But it seems to me that the potential union of Becks and "Lofty" makes much sense. Any old hack can describe the trajectory of a free-kick, but capturing the grim imperative of finding the right look, well, that's another story indeed.