Life's a drag under McClaren

Group E/ Israel 0 England 0: There are periods when consistency is a manager's fear rather than his ambition. England are all too settled in a recognisable style and it provokes dread that they will not feature in the Euro 2008 finals.

Failing to win at the Ramat Gan Stadium is a common enough experience for visitors and the hostile reaction in the away end was that of people who had spent so much to get to Tel Aviv only to be presented with another impoverished performance.

Steve McClaren's team have become prone to a dullness that is smothering their ambitions. Wayne Rooney's goal against the Netherlands during the friendly in November is the only one England have recorded in five fixtures. The visitors had chances on Saturday but not of the sort that leave a goalkeeper powerless. Dudu Aouate saved at the feet of Frank Lampard following one of the midfielder's rare pieces of interplay with Steven Gerrard, and the Chelsea midfielder had a later attempt that was dealt with unconvincingly.

Apart from that England grimaced as a couple of headers slipped by and cursed when Aouate came out to block just as the substitute Jermain Defoe threatened to come up with a poacher's goal.

This was no onslaught, merely a mild-mannered occupation of the opposition's half for much of the night. Gerrard roamed and strove to be enterprising but England as a whole were stiff, with no mercurial traits in mind or deed.

Rooney gets held to account, above all, because of the sheer scale of his talent. Unless he plunders Andorra on Wednesday, it is perfectly feasible that the third anniversary of his last goal for England in a competitive match will roll around in June.

McClaren is afflicted by a terrible shortage of dangerous forwards but it is the essence of a manager's work to cope with limitations. He does not appear to have any such knack, whether in switching tactics cunningly or in snapping a player out of his torpor. He has the air of a person bemoaning problems rather than addressing them.

England's campaign is dragging on instead of progressing.

In modern times no other manager has come into this post with quite so much to prove. That made McClaren's position precarious from the start and he will rightly be toppled from it should England be absent from Euro 2008.

Only now do the public appreciate that the national team had been adept at qualifying campaigns since 1993.

"Many people said it's going to be a hard place to come," McClaren argued on Saturday night. "Apart from the first 20 minutes we've dominated and done everything we possibly could. Our final execution let us down."

From his viewpoint this should have been the type of grinding 1-0 away win that everyone accepts. "I've done that in Europe and international football," he said.

Breaking deadlocks, however, is the essence of management and England's substitutions came too late to have an impact. People such as Jose Mourinho thrive precisely because of that gift and McClaren, from the moment the FA anointed him, has struggled to show he possesses it. There was comparable powerlessness in the 0-0 draw at home to Macedonia.

England, at most, were worthy against Israel. The shortage of deft or imaginative passing meant that Andrew Johnson was regularly using his pace to chase after the ball in wider areas when he had dreamed of striding through the channels between centre-half and full-back.

Israel, in any case, were rugged in the heart of the defence. The excellent Tal Ben Haim settled accounts in full with Rooney after being part of the Bolton Wanderers line-up that had endured the Manchester United forward scoring twice against them the previous weekend.

Before flying out to Tel Aviv Gerrard sighed, only slightly in jest, at the thought that Rooney had used up all his impact against Ben Haim in the domestic arena. The players are as bemused as McClaren by all those qualities that are mislaid whenever they make the switch from club to country.

If there is no remedy in the short term, the pressure increases to hit upon a pragmatic way of coping with the immediate challenge. England have not been doing that. One does not have to dream of a recall for Sven-Goran Eriksson to wish for the sort of qualifier when the team would muddle to a win.

England opened competently on Saturday but the action drifted along and Israel, who had conceded four goals in their previous competitive fixture, were permitted to re-establish confidence.

This was rehabilitation for a side that some locals believe has deteriorated over the past couple of years. It was McClaren's reputation that sustained more damage.

• Guardian Service