What can we expect from Roy Hodgson's England? Not very much, says Gary Lineker We do not keep the ball adequately enough, our players are not as technically gifted as you need to be in order to reach the later stages of the World Cup, and - with the exception of Wayne Rooney - our better players are no longer at their prime, performing age. All in all, we can see this is not a golden moment in our footballing history and we cannot look beyond the immediate task of actually making it to Brazil. No European side has ever won the tournament in South America anyway and even the most wildly optimistic England supporter would hesitate before suggesting we are going to reverse that trend. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of the performance against Montenegro summed up our strengths and flaws - the type of which we have seen so often before - in both encouraging and depressing terms. Our first half was enterprising - the system suiting our players - the passing was decent without being especially remarkable but there was a fluidity to our game. This was followed by the second-half retreat during which we did not seem capable of maintaining possession for the briefest, let alone sustained periods. Only when the game was all square again did we come out of our slumber and threaten. This is the eternal frustration of being an England supporter, where you see enough to make you believe we have the players to comfortably win these types of fixtures, only to realise old habits die hard and our shortcomings would be exposed when we come up against far sterner opponents. Keeping the ball is a prerequisite for any aspirational international side - our inability to do so is a recurring problem - and it is clear there is not going to be a transformation on that front with this particular squad in the next 12 months. What we desperately need before the next World Cup is to feel reinvigorated, revived by the maturity of our younger players who can at least offer us hope of better tidings once the likes of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard are no longer around. The next World Cup will be too soon for those emerging in Stuart Pearce's strong Under-21 squad and it feels rather like we are in a period of trying to retain our status as regular qualifiers until the next generation is ready to step up. The perennial question is asked about what the major problem is. One suggestion I would dismiss as nonsense in the light of the Rio Ferdinand situation is that our players lack passion or a desire to play for their country. In all my time involved with England, both as a player and supporter, I have never felt a shortage of pride in wearing the shirt was an issue. Ferdinand's departure from the squad has inevitably brought this matter sharply into focus again, with supporters wondering how much he actually wanted to play for England and why the interests of his club appear to have come first. Without knowing all the details as to why Rio said he wanted to be considered only to drop out once selected it is difficult to be critical of the player. I know from my own experiences the pressures the clubs put England players under when they do not want you to join up with the squad. For different reasons I was put in situations at both Everton and Tottenham Hotspur when my club managers wanted me to pull out. Once because of a slight injury and on another occasion because the club expected me to join a lucrative summer tour which clashed with England friendlies in Sydney and Malaysia under Graham Taylor. Both times I was determined to play for England and a compromise was reached. It always comes to down to the will of the player involved, regardless of what a manager might say. No doubt they can get into the ear of their less experienced players, but for all the regular talk of club-versus-country rows, if a seasoned international is determined to join his national team, nothing will stop him. I am not sure if Rio will ever get the opportunity to represent his country again, but I hope for his and England's sake he does. He remains one of the best players we have and we need him. If anything, our toils in the second half last Tuesday night underlined that. Before we get too gloomy and downcast about the immediate future, however, I have seen nothing to suggest we will not escape our group and make it to the finals. Yes, we are two points behind Montenegro in top spot now, but the final two group games are at at home, at Wembley. It is the away fixture in Ukraine in September that looks to be the most significant of the fixtures remaining. Win there and we will be safe. We will be there in Brazil in 2014, perhaps just not as impressively as we would like to be. But if that means our squad heads into that tournament under less pressure than before, that may be no bad thing.