When England played their first game since this summer’s World Cup on Wednesday, it was in front of the lowest ever crowd at the new Wembley Stadium.

Just 40,000 people turned up to watch the Three Lions take on Norway, giving the stadium an eerie and deserted look and no doubt driving fear into the hearts of the FA’s money men who are still trying to pay for the place.

But can anyone really be surprised at the turnout? After the humiliation in Brazil it is incredibly hard to get enthusiastic about an England team managed by Roy Hodgson.

Despite that, however, I still watched it on television. My wife says I’m addicted but I think the truth is I must have some deeply hidden masochistic tendencies which only surface when England are playing. Well, that’s 90 minutes of my life I’m not getting back.

Okay, it was only a friendly, and yes, England did manage to win. But if that was supposed to be beginning of bright new era, it was a dawn as false as they come.

Not a single shot on target until the 63rd minute. And that doesn’t really count as it came in the form of a penalty.

I understand that England may have lost some big names in the past couple of months – Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard – but I would argue that the players now at Hodgson’s disposal have the potential to be even better than those that have departed.

Raheem Sterling could easily go on to be one of the greatest England players of all time. Jack Wilshere, Fabian Delph, Alex Oxlaide Chamberlain, Calum Chambers, Luke Shaw, John Stones, Ross Barkley – the youth in the current squad is extremely exciting. Sadly, Hodgson isn’t. And it is really starting to show.

Tomorrow night the real business starts when England play Switzerland, probably the toughest game they face in a qualifying group which also includes the likes of San Marino, Lithuania and Estonia.

The Swiss, who were unlucky not to go further than they did in the World Cup, will put this ‘new’ England to the test, and based on last Wednesday’s evidence, there is every chance Hodgson’s dreary tactics may fail it.

That, for me at least, would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Hodgson would have to be put out of his (and our) misery before he does further damage to the confidence of England’s talented youngsters and turns them all into James Milner.

With the rest of the qualifying matches entirely winnable, it would be the perfect time to bring in a new man who is not tainted by the legacy of the worst tournament performance in England’s history.

No names mentioned but his name begins with H and ends with arry Redknapp.

Spending not building

I bumped into a friend of mine last week who is as passionate a Manchester United fan as you are likely to find in our fair country.

Not only that, but he is an astute football man – he knows the sport inside out and follows every aspect of the game with an intensity that makes Sir Alex Ferguson look like a Sunday League amateur.

Which is why I was extremely keen to get his opinion on United’s transfer window activity. Was he as excited about the new arrivals as every other United fan I met last week?

Not exactly. “It was totally unplanned. They bought players who were available rather than ones they needed” was his summary.

And you know what, he is absolutely right.

Many United fans appear to have been blinded by the arrivals of players like Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao. And to a certain extent that is understandable considering they are world-class players who would grace just about any team in the world.

The perfect time to bring in a new man not tainted by the worst performance in England’s history

But did United bring those two into the club as part of a grand design or simply because they were big names that happened to be available? Unfortunately you would have to say the latter.

If there was one area where the team didn’t really need a lot of tinkering, it was in the attacking department. Louis Van Gaal already had an embarrassment of riches at his disposal. Now, thanks to the new arrivals, the riches have expanded to such an extent that there is a very good chance he won’t be able to get all of them into his team. Alternatively, some of them may need to be played out of position, especially if he insists on persisting with his 3-5-2 formation.

Meanwhile, further down the team, the glaring gaps in the centre of midfield and the centre of defence remain. United were crying out for a ‘Cesc Fabregas’ to run the show from the centre of the park and a ‘Vincent Kompany’ to build their defence around. Neither arrived.

I could be doing Van Gaal a disservice. Maybe it was always his intention to turn United into a team that wins games 5-4 or 6-5, which would certainly make for some entertaining viewing. But I suspect my friend hit the nail on the head when he described this as a transfer window driven by panic. Last season’s failure coupled with an even worse start to this season pushed United to spend vast amounts of money on players they didn’t really need.

Time will tell whether it turns out to be money well spent. There is every chance that United could now have enough firepower to literally blast their way back into the top four.

I just get the impression that when he decided to hang up his managerial hat, this is not the path Sir Alex saw United travelling down. He spent a quarter of a century putting into place a ‘United Way’ of building teams.

Now, just over a year later, and they have a new way. Spend vast sums of money just like everybody else. They may not have sold their soul to the devil, but they’ve certainly bought themselves a new one.

Talk’s cheap

Talking about the transfer window in general, it’s good to see financial fair play (FFP) is really hitting home. Not.

During the latest trading period, which closed last week, English clubs spent a record £835 million (€1,052m) on players, more than 30 per cent higher than the previous record set last summer.

The FFP rules were supposed to stop clubs spending more than they could afford and persuade them to live within their means. They were supposed to usher in a new, frugal era when clubs grow their own stars rather than buying somebody else’s.

But when English clubs alone are spending almost a billion pounds on transfers, it doesn’t appear these rules are having much effect. Not only that, but the total transfer figure would have been much higher if clubs hadn’t found their latest way to cheat the system – loaning players instead of buying them outright.

Falcao’s move to United, to use an obvious example, is classified as a loan when in reality it is a permanent transfer in all but name. But rather than forking out the transfer fee now, they have ‘deferred’ it to a future date.

And that’s the main problem with FFP. Big clubs are big businesses, and as such they can call on financial advice from the greatest and most devious brains in the accounting world. They aren’t going to be held back from achieving their aims by some silly rules.

They will find ways of stretching, bending and circumnavigating them until their very existence becomes pointless.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade