Sport On Television: Ghost of game's fading glory forced to witness a horror story

Sir Tom Finney was sitting in the crowd as England lost to Spain at Old Trafford last week (BBC1, Wednesday). Mark Lawrenson, an aficionado of Preston North End, said the 84-year-old Deepdale legend was in fine fettle despite having had most of his spleen removed.

As a striker who played in a five-man front line, watching Peter Crouch ploughing a lone furrow up front might have brought a similar indentation to Sir Tom's brow, if not replacing his spleen with something bordering on real anger. Mind you, Finney had played against Spain in the 1950 World Cup and lost 1-0 to crash out of the tournament, and his previous game was a defeat to the USA, described at the time as England's worst ever performance.

With Steve McClaren's tenure as England manager assuming nightmare proportions already, the so-called Theatre of Dreams needed to be more of an operating theatre, with a chronic need for incisive moves and a cutting edge up front. By the end, major surgery was required.

The FA's waiting list for treatment is ever growing. It seems that, like the NHS, no matter how much money the broadcasters throw at the game the best players still don't show up for friendly internationals. John Motson revealed he and McClaren had come up with an alternative XI who were not available due to injury: Kirkland; A Cole, Terry, King, Bridge; Lennon, Hargreaves, Jenas, J Cole; Rooney, Johnson. There were no beds for Owen or Bent.

England played excitingly - for five minutes. After that it was excruciating, like watching rigor mortis set in. McClaren's Second XI were not flat-lining. That would be too generous; they had no such prescribed formation. The tedium was such that I passed the time inventing fantasy teams. How about a Premiership side of players with first names for surnames? James in goal; Neville, Terry, Ferdinand and Barry at the back; Henry (an honorary Englishman) and Owen up front. Jerome Thomas, Damien Francis... hmm, the midfield needs a bit of tinkering. But it would be no harder than trying to get Lampard and Gerrard to play together.

A newspaper once paid tribute to Finney by saying: "If all the brains in the game sat in committee to design the perfect player, they would come up with a reincarnation of Tom Finney." McClaren had finished reviving the corpse of Jonathan Woodgate, had strapped Kieron Dyer's limbs back together and retrieved Gareth Barry from the freezer. He was fiddling around with his favourite monster, Crouch. But he was without his impish assistant, Igor Rooney, scuttling under Frankencrouch's feet, and had been forced to visit the Premiership's charnel houses for spare parts.

In the studio, Gary Lineker asked the undertaker, Alan Hansen, to adopt a different line after vainly building up England's hopes throughout 2006. Hansen said: "They're all useless." An honest post-mortem. Reach for the embalming fluid.