James Lawton: Eriksson's road leads England to oblivion

It is now self-evident. The promise of Sven Goran Eriksson is in ruins. The Little Englanders who seemed so peevishly insular when they railed against the appointment of a "foreigner" have, at least in this specific case, been proved right. The Ice Man has melted before dismayed eyes.

There are degrees of defeat. Most defeats can be worked upon by a coach who is on top of his job. He can pinpoint areas of weakness. He can get an underperforming player back to some of the fundamentals that may have been blurred or neglected.

He can recognise telling slides in efficiency in certain areas of his team. He can break it all down and underline precisely where things are going wrong. He can embrace the fact that sometimes you can get a lot stronger at a broken place.

But you cannot do a whole lot with what happened to Eriksson's England this week, when they lost 3-1 to an Australian team who were playing together for the first time in 14 months. You cannot rebuild on shifting sand. You just have to watch all the particles blowing in the wind.

This truth was irresistible on a cold, bewildering night at the ground where Bobby Moore used to proclaim so imperiously with every stride and tackle and pass the value of a proper football education.

Of course, Eriksson is to some serious degree a victim of difficult circumstances. Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger are ferocious in their refusal to give England, or any international team, any more use of their players than is absolutely necessary. We cannot blame a Scot and a Frenchman for this. They are merely doing their jobs and their unyielding stance on the club-and-country issue was never likely be softened by the sight of the Premiership marching into the Football Association's Soho Square offices and taking over the show.

But that does not justify Eriksson in his descent to the status of a Premiership lap-dog, systematically reducing all England preparation for competitive football to farce. If he cannot stage build-up games that do not insult both the public and the players who are involved, that do not shamefully devalue the international caps that used to be a prize but now come down like confetti, he should settle for three-day training sessions. He could play practice matches. He could stop games after 20 minutes, re-cast the teams, work on something new. He could tell Rio Ferdinand that looking a million dollars on the ball does not relieve you of the need to make tackles worth more than six cents – which was around the value of the unsuccessful effort the £30m defender made to stop Harry Kewell for the second goal.

What happened at Upton Park surely represented the end of a road that is plainly going nowhere. What could you do with the appalling performance of the "first team" in the first half? How could you relate it to the more optimistic scamperings of Wayne Rooney and Jermaine Jenas and their mates in the second half? You couldn't. There were no joins. Eriksson talked defensively of poor finishing and defensive mistakes. He was sounding as though he had been involved in a serious football match. He did not kid anyone and when the questioning sharpened there was quite a bit of evidence that he still had some way to go before he convinced himself.

While the Republic of Ireland's new manager, Brian Kerr, was talking about a mere "start" to his job after an impressive victory at Hampden Park, you could not help remembering the style of Eriksson's opening game in a friendly against Spain at Villa Park nearly two years ago. He started as he plainly meant to carry on, sending in a barrage of substitutes, which effectively robs a team performance of any shape or real meaning. As a start, Eriksson's approach was shrewd enough: deflect responsibility, reduce the significance of any one early defeat, go carefully. But eventually, surely, he needs to show us a team which, step by step, is moving forward.

Much was recently made of the pursuit of a new coach when Eriksson's assistant, Steve McClaren, decided to concentrate on his task as Middlesbrough manager. Why was such importance attached to what should be very much a supporting role? The England manager is necessarily a full-time observer of the national game – and no one can question Eriksson's annual mileage – and a part-time coach. But what does Eriksson do when the players are prised away from their clubs? What is his style, his priorities? We may never know. More vitally, nor may his players.

The word is that his input is not high. He is not a Ferguson or a Wenger. He does not rage at the gods. He peers impassively from behind his professor's rimless specs.

The sadness now is that his style promised so much. After the emotion-charged days of Kevin Keegan and Graham Taylor, and the egocentricities of Glenn Hoddle, he was a waft of common sense and sophistication. He rescued World Cup qualification. He was in charge of a hallucinogenic night in Munich. But the tail-off has been long and depressing.

Exploiting the unlikely success in Munich proved desperate work. Robbie Fowler rescued a nervy performance against Albania, David Beckham a much worse one against Greece. The opening game of the World Cup brought tactical chaos that degenerated into long-ball hoofing. A shadowy Argentina were beaten, with impressive bite and spirit – but only after Eriksson's original team was re-cast, and given width with the replacement of the injured Owen Hargreaves by Trevor Sinclair.

Denmark imploded in the round of 16 – a benefit which was squandered terribly against a 10-man Brazil, who in the previous round had laboured, with controversial assistance from the referee, past a lively but scarcely luminous Belgium.

The line on the graph which continued to dip in a poor performance against Slovakia and an abject one against Macedonia this week reached its lowest point in defeat by Australia. The Aussies picked their way through a shambles. Being who they are, naturally they made the most of it. They enjoyed themselves in the ruins of Eriksson's reign. No doubt, and probably sooner than later, they will be seen as the new boys of international football who shouted that the King had shed the last of his clothes.