'After David James's dreadful error, the most criticised aspect of England's performance against Austria on Saturday was David Beckham's captaincy of a side that suddenly lost their sense of direction. When the team needed rallying after conceding two goals within three minutes, Beckham seemed to have no idea of how to go about the job.
This was merely a repetition of a pattern seen in all of England's three defeats in competitive matches since the arrival of Sven-Goran Eriksson almost four years ago. On each occasion, the man wearing the armband on the sleeve of his No7 shirt proved powerless to affect the course of the match.
Yesterday Eriksson was asked whether there was now a question mark against Beckham's leadership. "No," he replied. "For me, no. For the rest of the players, no."
Later the coach was more circumspect when asked if Beckham was capable of the kind of tactical appreciation that might enable him to take a re-organising role when the course of a match was swinging against England.
"He can do that," Eriksson said. "But when you as a football team start to perform not that well, it's not for one person - it could be me, it could be one of my coaches, it could be the captain - to just press a button and everything is perfect again. I wish it was that simple. It never is."
On Saturday we saw what can happen in the absence of a captain whose influence extends around the pitch. As they fell apart against Austria, England badly needed someone capable of leading by word and example. Beckham could only try to do more of what he was already doing, which was no help at all, and a lot of people suddenly wondered why his friend Gary Neville, a natural leader, was not wearing the armband.'