I've had enough of optimism about England - and there's little danger of that after one of the jammiest draws I've seen any team achieve, after a second half otherwise devoid of redeeming moments. The home side's one decent spell of the game did culminate in the first equaliser, but even that came eventually from a set-piece.
Any momentum was lost in a ghastly start to the second half, Wes Brown seemingly motivated to play even more poorly by scoring a goal. Joe Cole provided the flimsiest of fig leafs in the dying moments, but many had left by then and deservedly the boos rang out.
I was sat next to three Czech lads, none of whom thought much of their own team's prospects for the World Cup qualifying campaign. But their side were good enough to do England a service.
Fabio Capello did not send out his players to perform that badly, but those of us who have been watching England for long enough were not that surprised. Seeing is believing, I hope, and the Italian received a telling lesson in the way that confidence and ability can vanish when players don that white shirt.
David James could have done nothing about either goal (indeed it took Ashley Cole's attempted block to beat him for the first) but went AWOL in the second half to prove that he is merely the acting No 1.
John Terry was mugged by Milan Baros for that first goal and generally went about trying to prove the doubters right about his return to the captaincy. Brown was frequently clueless and challenged David Nugent against Andorra for the title of 'least deserved international scorer'.
But that is where we are. We're still waiting for one of the younger keepers to make an unanswerable case to replace James. Glen Johnson,anyone, at right-back? And Jonathan Woodgate, when he came on, did his best to make the skipper look good.
In the back five, the five starters were the best available players in their positions. Nothing we saw changed that. Sobering but true. What of the front six?
David Beckham lingered longest at the end, apparently. What was he thinking? Probably having second thoughts about his fitness to play 90 minutes of football after commuting across the Atlantic. He worked hard, but he looked off the pace throughout. Jan Koller was deemed unfit to play after a club trip to Russia's far east and as long as Beckham's circumstances remain the same he will struggle.
This is especially important because of what Capello is trying to do with the front six. Let's call them that, because it was often hard to work out what shape they were supposed to have. And that was not exactly unintentional.
It was not to everyone's taste and when mistakes came the team were left exposed, most conspicuously early on when a poor pass by Beckham with Brown in front of him led to Gareth Barry being booked for a desperate tackle-back. But the front six were trying - and on occasion successfully - to pass the ball around, retain possession and be flexible, covering each other's runs and looking for the right pass.
This is not an easy way to play and in the second half it broke down. But England did start to string the passes together before the break, they did move around the Czech half-probing for weaknesses, and had Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney and Jermain Defoe established a better understanding then more chances would have come. Petr Cech was still kept busy, even if too many of the shots were weak ones. Imagine, though, that Defoe had taken the best of them, after a neat pass from Gerrard.
England are still uncomfortable playing this way - but they have to be able to play possession football to succeed at this level. The biggest problem was this is a game Beckham struggles to play. It requires him to cover far more ground than being a conventional right-winger does and too often he would end a move by attempting an overoptimistic cross on a night when he would have to be on the top of his game to find the head of Defoe or Rooney. He has played this way in Madrid, but with more technically adept team-mates and as a younger man without a jetlag problem.
Out of possession, England did not recover their shape quickly enough, especially as the full-backs had to push forward. The players were still feeling their way. Gerrard delivered one left-foot cross - not a bad one, either - but was too happy to move away from that flank. There's still a massive amount of work to do and while Capello said that he would pick his strongest team for this game, I'd pray that in a competitive situation the substitutions would have been different. Beckham should have played his way out of the starting XI.
No, the results were not that different than under Steve McClaren. Stewart Downing or Joe Cole should get starting chances. But Capello is trying to get England to play football with the ball - that is the experiment that really matters and a challenge to whomever he picks.
Philip Cornwall