In his role as England’s international football head coach, Fabio Capello seems to be in a near-permanent state of over-paid underemployment.

With that “nice work if you can get it” thought in mind, it’s hard to comprehend that the Italian’s England team has actually played eight times since its abject dismissal from last year’s World Cup finals.

In four friendlies this season, three of which were at home, his record is won two, drawn one, lost one (goals: for six, against five).

In four European Championship 2012 qualifiers, two of which have been at home, it’s a more favourable won three, drawn one, lost none (Goals: for nine, against one).

So what does this tell us? 

Not a lot, in truth, because the cold statistics of our appearances in major finals once we get there suggest that England are likely to perform below expectations in Poland and Ukraine next summer.

On Saturday at 4.45pm, England begin this season’s remaining Euro 2012 qualifier at Wembley.

That will be the ninth game since Capello’s career nadir at the hands of a marauding German team in South Africa 2010.

But if his charges cannot prove under exam conditions that they’ve read Jonathan Wilson’s book The Anatomy of England from cover to cover 24 hours before they are due to kick off against Switzerland, he should perhaps send them home in disgrace with the pronouncement that they are, quite literally, “not fit for purpose”.

As this book’s cover tells us by its inspired subtitle, A History in Ten Matches is all we need to know to understand everything about England.

In other words, out of 894 international matches played to date, a sample of ten is enough to prove from our football DNA that we’re little more than a bunch of losers.

Even when we won the World Cup in 1966 on home turf, we had to rely on a dodgy Russian linesman, though Wilson optimistically argues that England played the best football of the tournament and deserved to win the cup.

Elsewhere, though, we’ve yet to even reach a final on enemy soil and, out of 59 matches in various World Cup finals, we’ve only won 26.

Wilson chose the ten games here not because they fitted a pre-determined template of what he wanted to say – which is something he deliberately wanted to avoid – but because “they highlight wider trends in the English game, or because they lie on the faultlines of history, marking the end of one era or the beginning of the next”.

Surprisingly, perhaps, neither that World Cup win of ’66, nor the “Hand of God” game against Maradona’s Argentina team in Mexico 1986 are directly featured.

But of the ten games that are, only four yielded wins despite an aggregate goals for and against ratio of 22-21 in England’s favour.

What can be learned from our most famous defeat, 3-6 at home to Hungary on November 25, 1953, a pivotal night when the England team included Wolves’ legend Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews and future World Cup winning boss Alf Ramsey himself?

Over to Hungarian star Puskás who enjoyed an even bigger 7-1 win over England just six months later by observing: “They just played the same, it was the only way they knew how to play and they stuck to it. 

“Naturally, we knew what to do to take them apart.”

In the search for a 21st century saviour, Wilson reminds us why Capello got the call to arms, thanks to a record of “nine league championships in 14 seasons, spread across four clubs in two countries”.

But, towards the end of a most entertaining 372-page analysis of the England psyche amid trends which can only now be truly perceived from afar, Wilson quotes Harold Macmillan to remind us that “events are always waiting to derail the best laid plans”.

Prior to his first international tournament in South Africa, “Capello had vowed not to repeat the mistakes of the past and take half-fit or out-of-form players to the World Cup”.

Wilson then notes how the exact opposite was true and “in the end circumstances made it all but unavoidable”.

Down the years, as if to underline Macmillan’s words, World Cup crises have enveloped star players from Gordon Banks (1970) to Kevin Keegan and Trevor Brooking (1982), Bryan Robson (1986), David Beckham (2002), Michael Owen (2006) and Wayne Rooney, Gareth Barry and Ledley King (2010).

If they are not capable of reading the whole book, England’s current crop of players should at least remember Wilson’s overall summary, that football should, in such circumstances, “be about taking the best raw materials possible and assembling them in the best possible way”.

The author concludes: “English football needs to rid itself of its Messiah-complex, stop looking for a mythical saviour who is going to redeem the protracted decline and get on with making the best of the present situation. As long as there are Messiahs, there are going to be crucifixions.”

The players, and we the anguished fans, have been warned.