James Lawton: The strange case of Lampard and Gerrard

Team spirit wounded by scatter-gun Eriksson

Though catastrophic defence is inevitably at the heart of the inquest into the latest crisis of confidence in Sven Goran Eriksson's leadership of England, this deeper, unchanging problem surfaced most profoundly in the team's heaviest defeat in 25 years.

Denmark, struggling on the edge of elimination from World Cup qualifying, were more coherent, more organised, more conscious of what they could - and could not - do. England, with Gerrard and Lampard again unable to inflict individual talent on what became, with the notable exception of Wayne Rooney, nothing more than a seamless mess, were back at the point of breakdown which came to Eriksson's teams in the World Cup in Japan and European Championship in Portugal.

Why? Eriksson said that it was a mystery. It wasn't. The truth yelled out in the Parken Stadium. The coach said that he couldn't explain the difference between a competent England in the first half and the rabble they became in the second. It was surely plain enough. The difference was that they were two different teams. Continuity with Eriksson is something you do half by half, if not minute by minute.

The great issues of football are not settled in that way. Teams do not happen like that. Teams are fashioned, nurtured, dovetailed, groom- ed - pick any word you want and then toss it away when you come to consider Eriksson's time as an international coach. He had a good reputation in club football, won big prizes, and plainly he could play that game. But with England he has been passive to the point of inertia.

With a vital qualifying game against Wales just a little more than two weeks away, Eriksson made five substitutions at half-time. He did what he always does. He made another friendly game meaningless, and that is the worst crime of his regime. Friendlies are not meaningless. They are the grist of a successful football mill. They have enabled generations of Brazilian teams to hone their game to perfection. They have made Germany a staple of the highest levels of tournament action. They gave the obscure Otto Rehhagel - beyond his native Germany, that is - the platform to build Greece as European champions on the foundation of team unity.

"Scrap friendlies" is one increasingly popular cry. There is another solution which, because of the huge and ridiculous financial commitment the FA has made to Eriksson, has long been considered impractical. It is to scrap the man who has squandered every opportunity to build from game to game in the classic fashion. Where else but in friendly games does Eriksson expect to make his team?

Times and circumstances change, no doubt, but some things are eternal. One of them is in the requirements of making a true football team, and here the puzzle of Gerrard's and Lampard's failure to deliver with anything like consistency the best of their club game takes us to the heart of England's problems. Trawl England for the players who have the best talent and the most natural feel for what they can bring to the game, and Gerrard and Lampard have to be ranked below only the prodigy Rooney. But they do not work together in England's central midfield. They do not fit, they do not gel. But what do Eriksson and his coaching staff do about it? Periodically - most recently in the middle of the European Championship - they conduct debates about the diamond formation, a mythic arrangement of players which inevitably changes in the natural flow of a game.

Sir Alf Ramsey's winning move was christened a "wingless wonder"; but it wasn't a tactic, it was a desire to get the most effective players into the team. Jack Charlton once told Ramsey that he still marvelled at the idea of being chosen to play alongside the likes of Bobby Moore. Ramsey narrowed his eyes and said: "I do not pick the best players, I pick the best team. Most certainly, they are not always the same thing."

Is this a language Eriksson understands? Apparently not. Here we saw England outplayed by a Danish team who, man for man, should not only have been beaten but torn apart. Gerrard and Lampard were anonymous, overshadowed utterly by Thomas Gravesen. One Danish observer this week, noting Gravesen's success for both Denmark and Rea Madrid, said: "Thomas is really just a ball-over. But he does do it very well."

He gives his team movement and rhythm. He will never break open a game as Gerrard does for Liverpool and Lampard for Chelsea. That is beyond his powers. But what he does has always been an ingredient of the best organised teams.

Why did Paul Scholes, arguably still England's most effect midfielder when he is playing in his natural position in the centre, walk out of international football? The suspicion must be that he wearied of operating in a malfunctioning midfield, where Beckham and Gerrard had to play, whatever their fitness or form, and Scholes was marginalised on the left. Eriksson spoke highly of Scholes but he never rearranged his star system to play him where he was most guaranteed to hurt the opposition. That was one of the haunting skeletons that came out of the cupboard to play in Copenhagen.

The greatest of these was the sense of missed opportunity. Because of Eriksson's approach, because he does recognise talent, there will always be the possibility of exceptional performance, as we saw in the World Cup qualifier in Munich three years ago. But what followed? Desperate games against Albania and Greece, rescued, ironically enough, first by Fowler, then Beckham. What we saw in Copenhagen this week was the other side of the Munich phenomenon, when the bells seemed to ring for a new and vibrant England. We saw what happens, sooner or later, when a team is thrown together every so often.

Scrap friendlies? Yes, but what would be put in their place? Maybe only official recognition that England's national team policy is simply to throw the dice. That's fine if you are running a casino, but it's no way to build a team.