Wright-Phillips vanishes beneath the hype

Whatever else he may be remembered for after his England reign is over, Sven Goran-Eriksson will surely go down in history as the man who did his damnedest to murder the international friendly.

On the same Villa pitch in February 2001, Eriksson had introduced himself by overseeing a lively victory over Spain. Okay, the new lad was trying to impress us and the players were trying to impress him so there was bound to be a bit of a buzz about the place. Alas, four years on, it is but a sepia-tinged memory. Competitive friendlies? Eriksson long ago replaced the buzz with a drone.

To be fair, last night he did not treat the concept of the friendly contemptuously, as if it were completely meaningless, and actually tried a bit of experimentation to liven up the now familiar insipid fare. Yet as his version of 4-3-3 turned out to be so weirdly indisciplined and shapeless, the end product was as unsatisfying as ever. "It was a good quality game," he insisted calmly. You wanted to strangle him.

Still, we trek along to these dismal affairs, somehow persuading ourselves that it can't be as bad as last time. We never learn our lesson. What memories did the 40,000 at Villa Park last night get for their 40 quid a throw? Well, in the second half, Gerrard whipped in a testing cross from the left touchline . . . er, and that's it.

Eriksson insisted he had learned plenty from the night. Like what? That England can't play 4-3-3? On the contrary. "We know now that it works," he countered, convincing no-one.

So, maybe he learned that if you play a new boy like the Premiership's leading marksman Andy Johnson down the flank for half an hour then you can learn nothing. Or maybe that if you don't give Stewart Downing, supposedly the answer to the old left-sided midfield woes, at least an hour in a fixture like this - he got only 30 minutes - it is a criminal waste of an opportunity.