Sir Bobby Charlton: O'Neill has natural authority that we need

It was bad news, every aspect of England's performance. It couldn't have been worse. But the truth is I wasn't that surprised. I woke up with a bad feeling and right down to the last minutes of the countdown I couldn't shake it.

I didn't like the noises coming out of the England camp and then when the BBC panel started their preview I waited for them to mention a single player from Croatia. I kept waiting – and thinking to myself, "Surely it cannot happen, surely we cannot again make the mistake of living in our own little world."

We did – and everyone in English football must face the consequences. The first priority now that time has run out on Steve McClaren is the appointment of a strong manager who can provide a short-term but vital solution to the crisis of confidence – and sheer basic football thinking – that was so evident at Wembley on Wednesday night.

Ideally, I would like him to be English, but the reality is that there is no outstanding candidate to supply the necessary strength.

This means that the Football Association should consider mending some fences and make a genuine overture to Martin O'Neill. I know he lacks international experience, but he has something about him that suggests to me that he would have a real chance of supplying something that has been plainly lacking in the England team for more years than it is comfortable to recall.

O'Neill has a touch of something shared by football men such as Ramsey, Stein, Busby and Shankly. He has an authority, a belief in himself that he seems able to transfer to players.

It is something that players such as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, who can be so dominant at club level, cried out for as they found themselves incapable of influencing one of the most important games England have ever played.

They need a tough guy on the touchline and in the dressing room. Someone who can take their doubts away. Make them relax.

Sven Goran Eriksson is winning now at Manchester City but, for me, this only emphasises the different demands of the club and international game. As an international manager you're not with your players all the time and so you don't get in the hearts and minds of them unless you are strong enough to take some of the responsibilities away from the players. Players like Gerrard and Lampard are OK with their clubs but when it comes to England they look so uneasy, so lacking in real confidence. They talk to the media – too much really – but what they say rarely seems to carry much conviction. Words can be idle if things aren't happening on the pitch.

All the great managers make it easy for their players. They take away doubts. They say, "This is the way we will play – just go out and do it."

There are huge issues to be dealt with in the long term if England are ever to be a significant force in world football – the influx of foreign players is a big problem that has to be addressed. Football is an international game, to a large degree dependent on international co-operation, so there should be a way of opening up more places in the world's richest and most popular league for native sons like Wayne Rooney to come through.

It would also be unfair not to acknowledge that without the likes of Rooney, Michael Owen, John Terry – especially Terry – and Rio Ferdinand, England lacked what otherwise might have been a certain swagger against Croatia. But there was a much deeper malaise beyond problems of available manpower.

The greatest problem was the way we played – it was bewildering in its naïvety.

One thing that screamed out to me was that we only needed to draw, but we never gave ourselves to time to ease into the pace of the game. What was the hurry?

The Croats settled into their performance so smoothly. They rolled the ball around – and then intelligently exploited the dreadful condition of the pitch.

The pitch was a goalkeeper's nightmare: the ball hits the deck and flies off at a hundred miles per hour. I used to love such conditions – and let fly at every opportunity. Two things you must not do. One is give your opponents a clear sight of the goal. Two is not to attempt to exploit the conditions yourself. England never had a shot at goal from outside the penalty area.

Based on my own experiences under Sir Alf Ramsey, I can only say that a team needs to have a certainty about what it is doing. It is the only way the fear of the unknown can be dealt with adequately.

However imposing the opposition, Ramsey was always emphatic that we had the means to win. Under Ramsey we never had one man up; when we had the ball we had three men up front. Jimmy Murphy, my great teacher at Manchester United, had made the point much earlier in my career.

"Remember," he used to say, "you've got to go up together and you've got to come back together. If you split up, if you let yourselves get stretched, you've given up the midfield – and that's the quickest way to lose your grip of a match."

It was hard on the midfielders, covering all that ground, but it was part of the job. You wouldn't have noticed against Croatia, however. As I said, I do accept that England missed certain important players, but then this is one of the hazards of football and if a team is properly set up, it shouldn't affect the way it plays.

The football of England has become aimless. It meanders from one game and one system to another, without any sense of progress – or lessons learnt. Always we are bombarded with talk of diamond formations, holding players and those who operate in the hole. It has to stop. England simply have to get back to the basics of good football. There is no great mystery to unravel. The "anonymous" players of Croatia proved that in a way we must never forget.