On The Premiership: In the great pantomime of English football, there is little doubt it is the scapegoat and the saviour who are granted star billing.

Ever since Steve McClaren's poleaxed players scurried on to their battle-bus after last week's embarrassing defeat in Zagreb, the casting process has been in full swing.

More of the fall-guy later: arguably the most pressing role to fill is that of the Messiah, although it is indicative of the panic gripping the national game in England that the leading contenders for this coveted part are separated in age by 14 years.

In the crinkly corner stands David Beckham, a man who was pilloried for his pedestrian performances at the World Cup and is no longer deemed good enough to warrant a place in Real Madrid's starting XI but is apparently capable of inspiring his national side to a tournament in 2008, the year he celebrates his 33rd birthday.

The alternative is Theo Walcott, who speaks like a 40-year-old but looks as if he has just started secondary school. There is no question that Arsenal's fledgling forward is a precocious talent, but, as his manager Arsene Wenger has observed, "it is wrong to expect too much from him. We must remember he is only a boy."

The truth is that neither the old-timer nor the teenager is the answer.

Beckham represents an unfulfilled past and Walcott the unforeseeable future, but that will not stop the debate raging between now and March, when McClaren's side make the arduous journey to Israel, another international "minnow" with the potential to make monkeys of their supposed superiors.

Poor McClaren. The Yorkshireman must have felt like a lottery winner when he was handed the country's second highest-profile job in the summer, but he is now beginning to understand - like so many of his predecessors - that the riches are a curse. The toothy grin which was flashed so readily at the end of the cake-walks against Greece and Andorra has disappeared, replaced by a furrowed brow and a semi-scowl.

It is McClaren, inevitably, who bore the brunt of English fury last week, although nobody can quite agree on exactly where he went wrong. Some have questioned his powers of motivation, and more have poured scorn on his penchant for PR pratfalls. But nearly everyone concurs that the decision to employ an alien 3-5-2 formation in Zagreb, of all venues, places McClaren in the same bracket as the former Scotland manager Ally McLeod, whose strategic nous was summed up with the immortal quip, "he thinks tactics are a new kind of peppermint."

That, however, conveniently overlooks the fact good ol' 4-4-2 was responsible for the equally dire goalless draw with Macedonia days earlier, and that top international sides - which England purport to be - should boast a modicum of flexibility.

There is something more fundamentally rotten in the state of the English game, and it is nothing to do with systems or the piquancy of the manager's pep-talks. Put bluntly, England's home-grown players lack the technique, discipline and patience to cope with the rigours of international football and, for this, the Premiership must be held partly responsible.

The very qualities which make England's top flight such an attractive proposition to foreign players and supporters - the harum-scarum pace, up 'n' at 'em attitude and emphasis on launching the ball forward as quickly as possible - are also the ones that make it such a barren breeding ground for the nation's talent.

The most striking aspect of Croatia's richly deserved victory last week - apart from Paul Robinson air-kicking his way into infamy - was the ease with which they kept the ball. While England, fuelled by their Premiership-induced impatience, thumped, whacked and crashed at every opportunity, Slaven Bilic's unheralded but polished team concentrated on the simple stuff: passing to feet, running into space, marrying defensive discipline with fluidity of movement. These skills have been shamefully neglected in the tuition of young English players, but until that is rectified, the travails of the national team will continue unabated.

In the meantime, McClaren could do worse than make his beleaguered squad study videos of Arsenal at their swaggering best. It is no coincidence that Wenger's team are currently the English side best placed to mount a credible challenge in the Champions League, which is the nearest club football gets to the patient, probing style of the international game. The Frenchman teaches his charges to view possession as a privilege, and the results are not only thrilling, but winning.

The worry for McClaren is that there were just two English natives in the Arsenal side which brushed aside Watford on Saturday.

However, that one of them was Walcott might just be enough to get England's pantomime villain smiling again.