James Lawton: Eriksson's talk of diamonds a cheap substitute for gilded craft of Ramsey

Harry Redknapp's bruised patriotism was expressed in typically bracing fashion when he left St Mary's Stadium in Southampton after the deeply discouraging 2-2 draw against Macedonia on Wednesday.

"If that performance came under Glenn Hoddle or Kevin Keegan you would be slaughtering them now," Redknapp, a founder member of the game's Little Englander club, called to the press box.

Portsmouth's manager, like much of the rest of the nation, must be suffering from a head cold. Otherwise, he would surely have sniffed the blood of a Swedish man.

England against makeweight Macedonia were as bankrupt as they ever were under previous coaches for whom no scorn was too broad or vicious.

The heaviest charges against Hoddle and Keegan and Graham Taylor – whose picture was superimposed on a turnip – was that they had failed to develop any sense of a team, of players secure in themselves and the regard of their coach.

One of Eriksson's many good fortunes, however, is that there is always someone handy for the role of scapegoat. These days it is usually David Seaman. The Arsenal goalkeeper's latest and surely terminating mistake in the England goal provided a smokescreen quite as convenient and all-enveloping as the one he sent up when totally misreading the flight of Ronaldinho's free-kick in the World Cup quarter-final. But just waft away a little of the smoke and what do you see? A team that in just five days has lost even that modicum of organisation and spirit that warded off the possibility of a shattering defeat in Bratislava last weekend.

Seaman's blunder, it is true, gave the Macedonians a surge of momentum they could not have dreamed of before arriving in Southampton but a properly prepared team, one groomed by a distinguished coach over nearly two years, would have surely experienced no more than brief embarrassment. England, unfortunately, unravelled to the point where they became little more than a rabble, with Alan Smith sent off and the captain, David Beckham, surviving rather more than a flirtation with a second yellow card. In such circumstances it is impossible not to recall, with poignance, the work of Sir Alf Ramsey.

Ramsey's place in the history of the English game is so secure because of the meaning of the nation's only World Cup win. It was not about a great range of tactical innovation, but a consummate understanding of the competitive character of, and potential to develop, certain players. His eyes would have glazed over had he heard Eriksson's agonised talk about the possibility of retaining the "diamond" formation which brought him salvation in the second half of the Bratislava game. He would have been stunned by the coach's decision to play Wayne Bridge out of position in his first competitive international start. Apologists for this bizarre development pointed out that Bridge had played in the position before. But they should have added that he had done it in club football – which is rather different to the challenge of settling into a national team – and not well enough to announce that it was his natural role.

Eriksson abandoned his experiment early in the second half and when the Southampton player added to the prevailing gloom as he dragged himself reluctantly from the field, you couldn't help recall all the heavy traffic between the England bench and the pitch that has been the dominating factor in all of the coach's friendly games since his appointment nearly two years ago. The proper purpose of these games, surely, is to nourish understanding among members of the team, and to give the coach a chance to fine tune. On Wednesday night England ran about as smoothly as the engine of a Cuban tractor.

There has never been a more significant friendly than the one played by Ramsey's team in Madrid six months before the 1966 World Cup. England won 2-0 in a superbly coherent victory, and the Spanish coach said that no one in the world could have challenged the English performance and "concept of teamwork". It was on that cold night that Ramsey determined that if necessary he could jettison able wingers such as John Connelly, Ian Callaghan and Terry Paine if it meant that players such as Alan Ball and Martin Peters would be involved. His judgement was not on systems but flesh-and-blood footballers.

A little earlier Ramsey had listened to the argument of Nobby Stiles that his best position was alongside the centre-half where he could read the game so well. Ramsey pointed out that before he could do that he had to prove himself better at the job than Bobby Moore and Norman Hunter. Stiles settled for the job of winning the ball in midfield and developing a radar system that might have been taken up by Nato.

On Wednesday it seemed that Eriksson's England were employing Braille. They were uncomfortable with themselves and their team-mates. They lacked leadership and any kind of sustained vision. Beckham's posturing was a parody of the kind of captaincy supplied by Moore. Eriksson flitted from one bright idea to another.

Redknapp's rage mounted inexorably before he challenged the nationality of the coach. But the issue wasn't really the colour of Eriksson's passport. It was the depth of his football credentials. They appear to have been mislaid. He needs to find them in a hurry.