It can feel almost a trick of the mind to remind yourself that England are unbeaten in all qualifiers since a 2009 defeat in Ukraine when Rob Green was sent off and, losing 1-0, Fabio Capello brought on Carlton Cole to try to conjure up a late equaliser.

Of 29 games, 22 have been won and England have a goal difference of +70. Anyone unfamiliar with the England tragicomedy would look at that record and never know this is a team that appears to be locked in a permanent battle for credibility.

In truth it has been a grey team occupying a grey place for longer than most people would probably care to remember, and especially in the years since Wayne Rooney’s body started to fail him, the touch stopped being quite so certain and a footballer who once always backed himself in any situation gave up taking on opponents. The young Rooney was like a force of nature. “He’s incredible,” Sven Goran Eriksson said at Euro 2004. “I don’t remember anyone making such an impression on a tournament since Pele in 1958.”

Fading old pro

English football loved the assassin-faced baby but the days have passed since he made us quicken our step enroute to wherever he was playing. What we are left with now is a fading old pro, approaching his 31st birthday, after starting at the age of 16 and never going through a season without playing at least 42 games.

That is why Southgate has done the sensible thing removing Rooney and we should probably avoid calling it courageous, or bottle, or any of the other words that have been applied so far. This is what it is: overdue. It cannot have been easy for Southgate to break the news but Rooney’s deterioration has not just been accelerating since the start of the season. There are plenty of us who have been suggesting for the past year or so it was time to cut him free, and the only issue for debate is why Sam Allardyce, and especially Roy Hodgson, always seemed so in thrall of the Manchester United player.

The mind goes back to an audience with Hodgson just before Euro 2016, sitting around a table at L’Escargot in Soho, when the England manager challenged the football writers in his company to jot down their starting lineups for the tournament. Six chose Rooney, nine left him out. It was not an exact science, admittedly, but it was still probably a reasonable reflection of public opinion. Hodgson smiled thinly, folded up the pieces of paper and passed them to a press officer, saying we would look back at the end of the tournament to see who was right.

Rooney did, in fairness, start Euro 2016 looking reasonably competent in his new midfield role but when he described himself in one press conference as a better player than earlier in his career it made you wince to hear a once-mighty player trying to manipulate the headlines. The next game was against Iceland and his contribution on that infamous night in Nice can probably be summed by L'Equipe's ratings the following morning. England's captain, record scorer and automatic pick, was given four out of 10.

Few people will argue with Southgate’s choice. When it comes to England’s forwards, it has been a long time since Rooney menaced defences in the manner of Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy, Daniel Sturridge and now Marcus Rashford. Maybe it is true, therefore, that he is better suited to a deeper position, but it is also difficult to recall the last time a centre-forward moved back to midfield and excelled. Dwight Yorke did okay-ish. Alan Smith had a go. It is not a lengthy list, by any means.

Rooney’s speciality in midfield has become the sprayed cross-field pass out to the wings. He played that one beautifully sometimes. But it was a deception.

Decoration

John Robertson used to love those passes before Brian Clough converted him from a mediocre central midfielder into a double European Cup winner on Nottingham Forest’s left wing. “I got great pleasure pinging the ball from left-half to outside-right and right-half to outside-left,” Robertson recalls in his autobiography. “If I knocked it 40 to 50 yards to feet I used to get a lot of personal satisfaction, but Cloughie summed up passes like that in one dismissive word – ‘decoration’.”

Jose Mourinho does not seem too keen either and in his first press conference as Manchester United manager he could hardly have been more emphatic that he will never use Rooney as a midfielder. Which is a problem because Rooney is adamant it is his best position and has used the media to make it clear he wants a rethink. Something has to give and this is the first time in Rooney’s career his performances have weakened, rather than strengthened, his bargaining position. Guardian Service