If we are going to make the next 12 months about peripheral issues, misunderstandings in press conferences,inconsistencies over such vital roles as the identity of the vice-vice-captain, who said what to who, when and why, then we might as well put a sock puppet in charge because Capello will never win that game.

Take the roof off: Capello's side cruised to a comfortable victory in Cardiff

It is our game, and we are the best at it, the steady diminishment of a public figure by degrees; death by a thousand comic cuts.

Football, meanwhile, is his game and in the past he has done it rather well. In the present, too.

He went with Bent ahead of Andy Carroll or Peter Crouch in Cardiff because the one thing the Welsh defence can do is head the ball out, and if England had played a big target man the temptation would have been to play long and high.

He chose Bent, who scored the second goal, and by 3.15pm the match was concluded. Quite impressive, that; particularly for a bloke who doesn't know what he's doing.

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