Watching Wednesday's Manchester derby, which was about as entertaining as the mating rituals of lugworms, Fabio Capello could have been forgiven for offering the silent hope that his Italian compatriot Roberto Mancini, the City manager, would bring on Emmanuel Adebayor and give his team something to aim at. Eventually Adebayor did appear but only in the closing seconds of stoppage time.
When an attack is struggling the temptation to lob lofty balls towards a tall target is hard to resist and at times it can be highly effective. Capello has this option in Peter Crouch but while Crouch, at 6ft 7in, has a natural advantage over most defenders he is not a particularly good header of the ball. So for Wednesday's friendly against France Capello could turn to Andy Carroll, whose strength in the air was further emphasised this week with the goals he nodded in for Newcastle United against Arsenal and Blackburn Rovers.
Carroll may be four inches shorter than Crouch but he does attack the ball whereas Crouch is often inclined to let it hit him and hope for the best. When a long cross reaches Carroll he usually finds the target no matter what the opposing goalkeeper does. Against Arsenal on Sunday he easily beat the advancing Lukasz Fabianski to the ball and on Wednesday, although Blackburn's Paul Robinson stayed on his line as Carroll met Joey Barton's free kick, he was also beaten by a well‑aimed header.
Carroll has scored seven times this season and is clearly the best English striker around at the moment. Form comes and goes but after the way England's attack floundered in the World Cup as Wayne Rooney struggled to get going Capello might as well give the 21-year-old a taste of international football now that Rooney is missing, if only to see what happens.
True, Carroll is on bail at present, having been charged with assaulting a former girlfriend, and was also fined last month following a brawl in a Newcastle nightclub. Nevertheless, Capello has been given the go-ahead by the Football Association to pick him, which is a wise decision since in the modern game a ban on the selection of players who have problems off the pitch would eventually find an England coach scouring the Blue Square leagues for innocent talents.
Even so the wisdom of reaching for the sky, as it were, to give England a better chance of scoring goals is questionable. Carroll would surely find things a bit different if he came up against some of the better defenders in the Champions League, which is a truer test of international potential.
Carroll may be strong and athletic on the ground but that alone would not make him an England prospect. No, if Capello includes him against France it will be because of his strength in the air, and football history shows that strikers selected for this quality alone often come and go without anyone noticing they were there.
Carroll's style recalls Mick Harford, who for a time was regarded as the best header of a ball in the English game. Yet Harford made two England appearances in the late 80s, when Bobby Robson was manager, and one of those was as a substitute. At that time, with Gary Lineker and Peter Beardsley in his attack, Robson did not need to look for goals from on high. Capello should be so lucky.
Before Beardsley joined Lineker up front Robson was playing Mark Hateley as a target man. Hateley's career took off when he scored with a towering header in England's 2-0 victory against Brazil in Rio in 1984 but in the 1986 World Cup, when Robson's side were on the point of going out after losing to Portugal and being held to a 0-0 draw by Morocco, he gave way to Beardsley and was rarely seen again. At least Hateley was more mobile on the ground than his father, Tony, who during an unhappy spell at Liverpool was cruelly described by Bill Shankly as "football's Douglas Bader".
To a man, England's leading scorers – Bobby Charlton, Lineker, Jimmy Greaves, Michael Owen – have been players of average or below-average height. The first heading specialist, Tommy Lawton, is 22nd on the list with 16 goals compared to Charlton's 49, admittedly in far fewer games. Carroll may be worth a try, but prayers for the second coming of Rooney will continue.