Why, oh why, do I keep doing this to myself?

You would think after supporting England for more than 30 years I would have got used to failure and the bitter taste of disappointment.

But no. Every time it happens – and that is on a regular, two-yearly basis – it still hurts when they let me down.

So why do I still expect? Why don’t I just resign myself to the fact that they will never achieve anything notable during my lifetime? Why do I still believe?

In fairness, I am still shocked by last Wednesday’s result in Russia. At half time everything seemed so rosy. It was all going according to plan, Rooney had scored a cracker and things looked comfortable. We were on our way to Switzerland.

Yet an inspired second half performance by the hosts, a dodgy penalty, a brilliant substitution and England’s failure to convert their chances all combined to ruin it. Big time.

We now face the prospect of missing a major tournament for the first time since 1994 when Graham Taylor comprehensively failed to take us to the World Cup in the USA.

England’ fate is no longer in their own hands. They either need Russia to drop points against Israel or Andorra or Croatia to lose to Macedonia. And even if one of those two unlikely scenarios does happen, England will then need to beat Croatia themselves to stand any chance of making it to the finals.

Essentially our hopes of qualifying are all but over. Only the most unlikely combination of results will do it for us and that, my experience tells me, is just not going to happen.

So what now? The obvious response will be for McClaren to get the sack. The FA will probably wait until the campaign is over and then unceremoniously give him the boot.

Is that fair? Should he be the scapegoat for the failure? Well, at the end of the day he was employed to do a job and that job was to make sure England qualified for next summer’s tournament and, hopefully, went on to win it.

On that basis alone he has failed and he should pay the price. He picked the team, he told them how to play, he motivated them, he gave them their tactics. It was his side and it failed.

Yet somehow I can’t help but feel that would be harsh on McClaren. After a shaky start to his international career he started to stamp his own authority on the team in recent months. It looked, to all intents and purposes, like it was coming together nicely on the back of five successive 3-0 victories.

Of course it isn’t just McClaren that will be blamed. The other old excuses will also be brought up: too many foreign players in the Premier League; too many matches in a season; not enough desire to play for their country.

But I think, and this is a genuine belief, it has nothing to do with any of that. This was just about England losing a match to a team that played better on the night.

Maybe England suffered the absence of key players more than we expected.

The experience and ability of Terry, Cole, Beckham, Neville and Heskey might have tipped the balance in our favour. Maybe the artificial pitch played a bigger role that we expected too.

However, I don’t think a different manager would have made all that much difference. The tactics may have been different but, then again, I don’t think McClaren particularly got them wrong.

In short, this is one time when I don’t think there is anybody or anything in particular to blame. It just happened.

Of course, that doesn’t make it hurt any less. England fans will now be dreading next summer when we will have plenty of football to watch, but none of it ‘personal’.

I can barely remember how it felt in 1994 but I am pretty sure it was dire.

The sort of summer you want to end swiftly so the pain of having to watch the rest of Europe enjoy a festival of football while your team kicks its heels is quickly over.

As I said, you would have thought that being an England fan for so many years would have taught me to deal with these disappointments.

But life without optimism would be dull and depressing in the extreme. So roll on the World Cup in 2010. We have to be in with a shout of winning that. Don’t we?

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