James Lawton: Eriksson arrival signified the end for old England

Howard Wilkinson's return to the maelstrom of Premiership football is plainly not what he had in mind a few years ago when he was the undisputed kingmaker of England's national team.

"The most important question," said Noel White, the chairman of the Football Association's international committee, "is whether any new England coach can work with Howard." That, for anyone who believed that outstanding coaches and managers at any level of the game announced themselves by their deeds and not from where they received their preferment, represented a dangerous accumulation of power.

But Wilkinson, a tough, intelligent football man who no doubt brought impressive administrative gifts to his role as the FA's technical director, lost his power when Sven Goran Eriksson was appointed in the wake of Kevin Keegan's failure to convert unbridled optimism into effective work on the international stage. On the face of it, that was to the benefit of the national team. It meant that whoever was selected as national coach in the future would have made his case in the real football world, dealing with players and riding the pressures of the game, and not because he was the annointed one of a bureaucratic system shaped by one man.

However, on the eve of England's latest qualification challenge for the European Championship finals in Portugal in two years' time, the most pressing question does not not concern Wilkinson's well rewarded future at the Stadium of Light. If the Sunderland chairman, Bob Murray, was looking for a hard-nosed pro to root out the causes of prolonged underachievement he could hardly have made a shrewder choice. No, the most critical issue now is whether Eriksson is quite the man guaranteed to discredit Wilkinson's ideas on the grooming of national coaches as he appeared to be while renovating England's World Cup qualifying campaign.

The inherent weakness of the Slovakian team England face here tomorrow night, and that of next Wednesday's opponents in Southampton, Macedonia, means that the chance of serious mishap, even in the absence of the pillars of central defence, Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell, are fairly remote. Eriksson, though, must know that the World Cup semi-finalists, Turkey, represent an infinitely more formidable obstacle and nor is there any doubt that the England coach is currently not exactly creating great waves of confidence.

Wilkinson's belief is that effective national coaches are made rather than born, but a new man comes in with his own convictions and rich experience as someone who has learned hard-won lessons and, above all, knows his own mind. This was not the impression given by Eriksson when he recently issued a questionnaires to players who are supposed to be led rather than consulted. Running a winning team has never been an exercise in democracy as Matt Busby, Jock Stein, Bill Shankly, Don Revie and Brian Clough have shown.

Sir Alf Ramsey, the only Englishman to run a winning World Cup team, was even reluctant to compromise his passion for Westerns on the team's night out at the cinema. The questionnaire is perhaps not a hanging offence, but it creates an unsettling vibration along with recent inconsistencies in selection. The dropping of Joe Cole, without benefit of anything like a serious chance to prove himself, and Lee Bowyer is particularly worrying – as is the recent harping on the paramount importance of current form. Why, also, is it necessary for Eriksson to interrogate the veteran David Seaman on the timing of his retirement?

The coach's imperative is to pick his best players, those who have established that status in his mind over a sustained period, irrespective of the ebb and flow of their form and their own ideas on the good times to call it quits.

Eriksson said the other day that his priority is to pick only players in "good shape," by which he meant those who were operating at the top of their form. What happened to the old belief that form is temporary and class is permanent; where is the implication of loyalty to players who in the past have established their credentials, and who may, at critical times, require reinforcement rather than some brusque dismissal.

Of course, the winning coach does not encourage a breath of complacency, But he does create self-belief in the certainty that it is always going to be a cornerstone of success.

Eriksson's defenders, among whom the most fervent is the FA's chief executive, Adam Crozier, argue that any negative judgement is premature. They say that Eriksson has earned the benefit of many doubts with his remarkable transformation of England's World Cup qualifying campaign – and the team's unexpected progress to the quarter-finals. They point to his relaxed style and sense of perspective, and no doubt these endorsements will carry him through what should be a relatively risk-free assignment tomorrow night.

What they cannot do, at this point in a new game, is suggest that thus far Eriksson has made a bonfire of the old king-making dreams of Howard Wilkinson.