Rob Key in a bind as McCullum's wild ride hits Ashes skids

"I thought England might have a chance of taking them close but they've just made so many bad decisions… I mean, this has been a horrendous trip, because it's actually been worse than we thought. It's made Australia look better than they are, even though they are a good side. They're a good bowling attack, but they're not a great, great team."

That was the verdict given by Rob Key four years ago, straight after England went 3-0 down to Australia at Melbourne, and it feels eerily familiar.

Key was the most critical Sky Sports pundit after the 2021-22 series and on Tuesday morning, his journey from poacher to gamekeeper will finally be complete when he explains to the media why history has repeated itself in his capacity as England's managing director.

Ashes series defeats put jobs on the line, and Key will know that his position is vulnerable. He told fans to "buckle up and get ready for the ride" when he appointed Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum as captain and coach back in 2022 but the sense of fun has disappeared: after early success in those roles, their England team has now lost more Tests (13) than it has won (12) in the last two years.

Stokes's position as captain appears safe: he wants to continue, England will be loath to risk losing him altogether, and there are no viable alternatives beyond his deputy Harry Brook, whose naivety has been obvious in this series. But the divergence between Stokes's public comments and McCullum's has become increasingly clear as this tour has worn on.

While Stokes was praising his batters for getting "stuck in" and showing "fight and responsibility" after their defeat in Adelaide, McCullum was rueing England's lack of conviction in their attacking style: "I'll put my hand up as coach and say there should have been that absolute clarity of, 'Whatever happens in this series, this is how we need to play.'"

They have become unclear whether they are trying to remove pressure or embrace it: Stokes said England had focused on "taking the added pressure off" after defeat in Adelaide, having ramped it up with his "weak men" comments in Brisbane, while McCullum spoke about trying to "free guys up" having previously described the Ashes as "the biggest series of all of our lives".

The truth is that Key has put himself in a bind with McCullum. Fifteen months ago, he decided not only to extend his head coach's contract until the end of 2027 but to expand his brief to cover England's white-ball teams. It was a remarkable show of faith framed as a "strategic restructure" but has backfired badly, with neither Test nor white-ball set-up benefitting.

England bombed out of the Champions Trophy without winning a game and their ODI record under McCullum is dreadful, with four wins and 11 defeats. Their T20I results have been slightly better with eight wins and five defeats, but that is hardly a marked improvement after they reached the semi-final of last year's World Cup in the Caribbean.

Those results helped to dilute any sense of aura that remained around McCullum, and exposed the limitations of his coaching philosophy. His stripped-back approach and simple messaging worked for England's Test team as a direct response to constraint and complication, but his attempts at refinement - both of style and personnel - have been found wanting.

Key pushed for convergence between England's Test and white-ball squads but it has not worked: Mark Wood was ineffective at the Champions Trophy, then sustained a knee injury which has limited him to 11 overs in international cricket since, while Ben Duckett and Jamie Smith were burned out by the end of the home summer and their form is yet to recover.

Going all-in on McCullum could be the mistake that sinks Key's tenure as managing director, echoing his predecessor Ashley Giles's infamous decision to add selectorial duties to Chris Silverwood's position as head coach in 2021. Giles was axed weeks after overseeing England's 4-0 defeat in Australia, and another winless tour could spell the end for Key too.

England consistently get the details wrong under this regime. They relied on an internal warm-up match at a club ground before the first Test in Perth and were then twice bowled out inside 40 overs. Securing high-quality preparation is easier said than done but if England had booked their mid-series break in Noosa a year out, then why had they not booked the WACA?

They have not had a fielding coach since Paul Collingwood left the set-up at the start of the summer and it has shown. Their shoddy catching cost them the decisive fifth Test against India at The Oval but nothing was done to rectify it; in Adelaide, Brook's costly drops of Usman Khawaja and Travis Head stood in contrast to Marnus Labuschagne's athleticism in the slips.

Brydon Carse has only been a Test cricketer for 14 months but has already worked under three fast-bowling coaches: James Anderson, Tim Southee and David Saker, who was reappointed after alternative options - such as Dale Steyn - were sounded out for their availability far too late in the day.

For the T20 World Cup in 2022, England appointed Mike Hussey on a short-term basis to provide local knowledge. This time, they relied on batting coach Marcus Trescothick and McCullum, who averaged 26.10 and 24.31 respectively in Australia; Trescothick's admission in Brisbane that they had never discussed the perils of driving on the up was baffling.

All three areas align with the wider sense of a brain drain at the ECB in the second half of Key's tenure, coinciding with the loss of Mo Bobat as performance director. The analysis department has lost its influence and the scouting network has been hollowed out; Australia's team environment is far more diligent, detailed and fundamentally professional than England's.

Key leads on selection and England have made several errors. It was clear after their tour to Pakistan last year that Ollie Pope's race as a No. 3 was run, and Jacob Bethell's impressive start to his career in New Zealand provided them with an obvious solution. But they retained Pope on the back of 171 against a poor Zimbabwe attack, and he has averaged 28.73 since.

They were totally committed to the Shoaib Bashir experiment until it was too late to change tack, and their only other spinner was a part-timer. Will Jacks, an inherently defensive selection, took 3 for 212 in 39 overs on a turning pitch in Adelaide three months after Key had explained that Rehan Ahmed was not included due to his lack of experience "being the sole spinner".

With the exception of Jofra Archer, England's seam attack has misfired and Key's obsession with pace has been found out. "This 75mph, keeper up, dobbing it on a length - you know that doesn't work in Test cricket," Key said last year; England's resistance at the Gabba ended when Stokes edged an 80mph ball behind to Alex Carey, standing up to the stumps.

It is to Key's credit that he had a vision as to how England could finally win in Australia, and tried to do things differently to his predecessors. But it was Zak Crawley - whom Key once mentored, and has consistently backed - who sounded the death knell on the fourth evening in Adelaide: "It's hard to play that way that we have in the past… It's not as easy to score quickly out here."

McCullum made clear after England's defeat in Adelaide that he plans to continue as coach and his substantial salary means that sacking him would be an expensive decision. Key is in no position to make it: to do so would mean admitting that he got one of the biggest calls of his tenure so badly wrong that it would render his own role untenable.

The proximity of the T20 World Cup - England's opening match is a month after the final day of the Ashes - is a complicating factor, but this series has badly undermined Key's authority. "My hunch is, it's a role you do for a bit," Key said, one year into the job. "Then you move on and pass it on to a new voice." If England end this tour winless, it will be time to do so.