Keegan lacks prescription for his ills

Hindsight. If there is one destination the losing manager of any team - be it Ballyclare Comrades or Brazil - should never go to, it is the refuge known as hindsight. Kevin Keegan went there yesterday. It was a tentative trip, but Keegan definitely uttered the word at lunchtime yesterday. Another England manager, someone less respected as a human being, would have been taken out the back for such a thing. Keegan is different, Keegan is relentlessly likeable and that is the reason why he will hold onto his job, even though it is blatant that he has huge shortcomings as a manager at this level.

Everyone knows this, now even Keegan. Everyone also knows that if management is about anything, it is about foresight. After the calamitous displays against Portugal and Germany the previous week, the least expected of Keegan as England approached Romania on Tuesday night in Charleroi was that he had learned from those two faltering games and come to a new understanding of the demands of international football. This would manifest itself first in England's team sheet and then on the pitch. As we saw after less than a minute, when Alan Shearer gave the ball away with his first touch, that did not happen. England were stiff, individually and collectively. Keegan hadn't the foresight to make hindsight an irrelevance. That is very worrying for England's future.

Keegan insisted yesterday that the tournament had been "a big learning curve" for him and that he was still the man for the job. But when pressed on the detail of what he had learned the England manager's face went blank.

He was able to give the same frank and honest assessment of how poorly England had played, of how badly they had passed the ball, but when it came to explaining why this was so Keegan was at his least impressive since he took the job 15 months ago. The central issue of formation - whether to be 3-5-2 or 4-4-2 - came back to haunt him. Against Argentina in February, England had been 3-5-2 and encouraging. Against Malta the week before Euro 2000 began, England were 4-4-2 and appalling. Keegan stuck rigidly to the latter line-up.

It begged the question: if Maltese forwards could expose Martin Keown and Sol Campbell, what would Luis Figo, Oliver Bierhoff and Adrian Ilie do? Bierhoff did not even play, yet England were still undone with remarkable ease by all three opponents.

Keegan was not fooled by the Germany game, yet he still put out the same team on Tuesday rather than finding an extra body for an over-run midfield. "It was logical to expect that side to play better," he said. "With the benefit of hindsight, if you said to me would I do it again, I mightn't have decided to do that. Because it didn't work, 4-4-2. We didn't make it work."

Keegan accepted his share of responsibility for that. "I wasn't able to get them to do what I wanted them to do," was his revealing admission. "I'm not blaming the players. I've got to find a way to make it possible for the players to pass the ball better. That is the job of a coach."

But then Shearer, speaking for the players, the same group who came together after the Portugal match and tried to persuade Keegan to alter his tactics, said that they were also culpable for England's humiliating downfall.

Asked why he and his colleagues had been so flawed at the most basic tasks, Shearer replied: "I really don't know, that's the frustrating and disappointing thing about it. In patches we've shown it, but in long spells we were very, very disappointing. Yes, we got the right result against Germany, but we didn't play very well. The players have to take the responsibility. We got what we deserved - an early plane home. It's nothing to do with tactics, luck or anything else. We weren't good enough."

Shearer said he did not "imagine feeling so empty or so hurt". But this was the morning after the night before and Shearer had won the final cap of his England career.

Even at 29, though, Shearer was adamant he would not reconsider his international retirement. "One thing has to be sacrificed and obviously it can't be Newcastle," he said. "It has to be England. I want to control it. I don't want people to say I should have retired earlier."

Shearer then described his view of the circumstances of his last goal, the 40th-minute penalty. "I was the first with my arms up shouting for the penalty, but then I realised: `Jesus, I've got to take it'. I was nervous. But in the stadium the night before I knew a Romanian would be watching me practice. So I purposefully took five to the other side in the hope it would get back. It worked."

At last in this tournament someone in an English jersey had shown they were capable of being clever. Before the event.