James Lawton: Eriksson makes dangerous error by sleeping with the enemy

A nanosecond of Ferguson contempt, that's all it took. After all the years of platitude and self-interest, the Manchester United manager this week exposed the reality of the club and country debate.

It has always been so, of course, but when Paul Scholes was sent out to play at Old Trafford this week, having earlier been withdrawn from the squad for today's mockery of international football between England and Portugal at Villa Park, the last of the pretence was over. It confirmed that Ferguson and Manchester United, and the rest of the Premiership crowd, have about as much interest in the welfare of Sven Goran Eriksson's England as George Bush does for the ecological heartbeat of the Upper Amazon.

But then what encouragement have they had, what incitement? Cluckings of sympathy for Eriksson, I'm afraid, have to be placed in the same category as the fervent declarations by Michael Owen, Rio Ferdinand, and Steven Gerrard that they are fully committed to today's "preparation" for the upcoming challenge of European Championship qualification. It is well-intentioned irrelevance at best.

It is impossible to have too much sympathy for Eriksson for two reasons. One is that his famous diplomacy, which has served him well in avoiding the kind of unnecessary pratfalls which bedevilled so many of his predecessors, has been a feeble weapon against the self-interest of the Fergusons, the Wengers and the Houlliers. Yesterday Eriksson made a stab at defiance but only managed to sound like an anti-crime campaigner who had just had his house burgled.

He has meekly submitted to the proposition that when England players do arrive for a friendly match their standard playing time is around 45 minutes. The consequence has been a series of utterly meaningless international matches, cheap caps and bankrupt planning. Eriksson has talked about working with the managers, but how do you constructively co-operate with Premiership people if their transparent instinct is to give as little as they can?

Apologists may say Eriksson is simply being pragmatic, seeing his environment as it is rather than how he would like it to be. But couch it how you like, it is still sleeping with the enemy. It is an increasingly desperate enemy who believes he simply cannot miss a trick in the battle to keep his nose in front of the domestic opposition. England is another show in another theatre.

At the heart of this is another truth which surely complicates the position of the Football Association as it speaks up for its embattled manager – and empowers his declaration that in future injured players must report to national squad gatherings, if necessary, presumably, by wheelchair and stretcher. Talk about slamming the ambulance door after the patient has limped, dubiously, away.

The fact is that when England promise a little glory, as they did before the numbing nosedive at the feet of Brazil in the World Cup quarter-final, the most passionate response is from those sections of the nation least attached to one particular club. Housewives are suddenly agog. Stockbrokers honk their horns. But the average United fan is much more interested in Beckham or Ferdinand's availability for the next big game at Old Trafford.

Imagine the dilemma facing any fair-minded arbiter of this long-running conflict between the interests of club and the country. Who do you favour, the professional football men who are paid not to augment the overall strength of the game but to preserve, at every turn, the best interests of their clubs – and now their shareholders – or the man entrusted with the progress of the national team?

You cannot defend Ferguson's position this week. You can only understand it and accept that it does not flow entirely from his own driven and not famously generous nature in all matters that affect his own career and his own team. He is, after all, operating in a world which has never been less inclined to award bonuses for altruism. But then how passionately can you argue for Eriksson's right to unchallenged access to all players?

The FA does not pay their huge salaries. The medical supervision it provides is under intense scrutiny. And what does Eriksson do when he gathers together his troops before non-competitive games like today's? He makes an absolute parody of the kind of preparation which delivered the World Cup to England back in 1966.

It is true that Eriksson pulled off a formidable achievement in turning around England's qualifying position. He did it with common sense. He picked the best players, when they were available, in their best positions. He did not bombard them with his own coaching theories. He did not inflict his ego. Indeed, he talked like a rational human being, which was a welcome plus. That was good, as far it went. Unfortunately, in the last analysis, it was not nearly far enough.

The final preparation before the World Cup was unfathomable. The stop-over in Dubai was risible. By surrendering the right, either voluntarily or by tacit agreement with his notional allies running the Premiership, to field key players over 90 minutes of earlier friendly games he abandoned any chance of the kind of systematic team-building which was the key to Sir Alf Ramsey's success in 1966.

The vital decision of Ramsey was to jettison wingers in the later stages of the World Cup tournament. He did this, however, only after exhaustive exploration of the possibilities of such wide players as Peter Thompson, Terry Paine, Ian Callaghan, and John Connelly. He had a few experiments down the road – proper trials, that is, not little half-a-game flings, and, at the critical phase of the World Cup he acted upon his conviction that to continue playing orthodox wingers would exclude two of his best players: Alan Ball and Martin Peters. Ramsey practised trial and error.

Who could say what Eriksson's policy was when he went off to the Far East a few months ago? Who could separate illusion from reality. Which was the illusion: the dreadful performance against Sweden in the opening game or the stirring victory over Argentina? The only certainty was that a striking aspect of England's winning performance, the width provided by Trevor Sinclair, happened by accident when Owen Hargreaves was injured.

The FA insists that Eriksson had a big credit balance when England's World Cup was over. Quarter-finalists after languishing at the bottom of their qualifying group 18 months earlier, that wasn't too bad. Perhaps not, in those terms. But when you looked at England against Brazil in the second half, when the World Cup drifted away not on Seaman's ghastly error but a complete breakdown in initiative and basic football logic, you had a sharply different sense. You saw a team meandering into a brick wall.

It was, certainly, not an ideal platform from which Eriksson could angrily cry for more unrestricted use of his key players. What, really, had been done with the time he had?

Maybe it is no reason to absolve Sir Alex Ferguson from a charge of rampant self-interest. But it does take away some of the heat. What, you have to ask, would Scholes have been involved in at Villa Park today? Another farce, you have to suspect, for which Eriksson would have to carry at least some of the blame. Yes, the club should support the country. But first the country must help itself. This requires Eriksson to occasionally speak from his gut rather than his refined nose for public relations and, just as vitally, to be seen to building a team rather than wasting everyone's time. That, of course, includes his own.