Painful: Jordan Henderson (centre) was brought on against Italy, not Jones

Hodgson was talking of revolution before departing the team base on  Monday, but it is hard to have faith in that concept when the tiniest tweak, the merest deviation from convention was beyond English imaginations only the night before.

To breathe new life into this team requires innovation of thought as much as changes of personnel.

Every revolution begins in the mind. Revolutions are explosions of ideas, from Republicanism to Bolshevism and the Arab Spring. They start with a thought — ‘What if...?’ — become an intellectual movement and then a force for action.

Except when did English football last wonder ‘What if’? Ask the whereabouts of England’s Pirlo and everybody cries ‘Paul Scholes’. But that is like bemoaning the current standard of leadership in the Labour Party and being offered Clement Attlee. Scholes retired from international football almost a  decade ago now, disillusioned that a manager, Sven Goran Eriksson, who thought in very straight lines, insisted on playing him wide left.

Another opportunity missed.

If we are talking radicalism, Jones could be a truly revolutionary force in the English game. We strive to ape the potential of players from continental Europe and South America but, when we produce one of our own, we ignore him.

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