Dave Tickner: No peril, no joy, but England get it done

It’s not really England’s fault. Or Gareth Southgate’s, or Roy Hodgson’s. But through the twin quirks of being a quite good international football team and somehow always managing to wangle really easy draws when the names come out of the big glass bowls, qualification campaigns have become almost entirely dull.

And the ennui is never more absolute than at Wembley, a huge and legendary cathedral of the sport that surely deserves better than this. 

Since a 1-1 draw against Ukraine in the opening home game of qualification for the 2014 World Cup, England have played 12 further qualifiers at Wembley. They have won all 12 of those games, conceding only two goals.

The narrowest margin of victory in that time is 2-0, the default score that accounts for five of the victories. The widest margin is 5-0, achieved twice, both against San Marino. The overall sequence reads: 5-0, 4-0, 4-1,  2-0, 5-0, 3-1, 4-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 3-0, 2-0.

This, then, is the England home qualifier. No peril, no excitement, no great feats of goalscoring, almost no goals conceded. Just extremely efficient, consistent box-ticking. And the trend, if anything, is toward greater uniformity. Four of the last five Wembley qualifiers have ended 2-0.

There are reasons. First, the great bulk of qualifying games take place during the season, interrupting the proper, competitive football. Every member of England’s squad has more important games to come in the next eight weeks than Lithuania at home. Simplistically: if they can get the job done at 90 per cent, why give 100?

The recent wins over Malta and Lithuania both fall into another related category: one whereby the final result is ultimately acceptable for both sides. England get their win, their opponent avoids embarrassment. Both teams would have taken that result if offered it beforehand. It’s hard to drum up much excitement in these situations.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that the only break from the run of 2-0 Wembley wins in the last five is a 3-0 win over Scotland, who for obvious reasons of history and geography could not settle for any kind of defeat.

But it would be churlish to criticise England for making the straightforward best of the situation. They have now won 14 and drawn one of their last 15 qualifiers home and away, conceding only three goals.

That this efficiency is now marshalled by Gareth Southgate, a man who looks and sounds like an approachable bank manager telling you in a friendly but determined tone that sadly he just can't authorise that loan at this point seems oddly fitting.

The early days of Southgate’s reign, though, do feel oddly impressive and reassuringly solid for a manager with little on his CV compared to some of those to come before him.

He is in one sense the classic safe-pair-of-hands reaction to the failed Sam Allardyce gamble, but even before that he was being groomed and prepared for high office by the FA.

He may have somewhat fortuitously fallen into the job, but possesses a quiet authority and has crucially managed to apparently effortlessly solve a problem that his predecessor refused in his brief time in charge to even acknowledge. The Rooney Conundrum threatened to be an issue that dogged Southgate. There is no news vacuum quite like an international window vacuum, and the media will latch on anything to fill it. Especially given England’s aforementioned stress-and-excitement-free progress through qualifying these days. And especially if the story concerns Wayne Rooney, still the most famous English footballer in the land.

Instead, it is barely an issue at all. Rooney has been quietly and correctly sidelined, with Southgate quietly and correctly insisting that no doors have been closed on the country’s record goalscorer.

By happy coincidence, the successful recall for a reinvigorated 34-year-old Jermain Defoe serves also to show that Southgate can be taken at his word here. If Rooney is prepared to follow the example of Defoe, who has returned to top-flight English football from Toronto with his eyes reopened, utterly determined to do all he can to make his last years at the highest level among his best.

Fourteen Premier League goals for a doomed Sunderland side is a fine return, and he was excellent as the focal point of England’s supposedly fluid but too often stilted front four on Sunday.

With the ‘three number 10s’ operating behind and around him, Defoe sensibly kept himself on the shoulder of the centre-backs, playing almost exclusively within the width of the penalty area. His movement and running were exemplary throughout his hour on the field, while his goal demonstrated a striker’s instinct for knowing when, instead of making the run, to actually stand still.

While Adam Lallana, Raheem Sterling and Dele Alli – wonderful footballers all – flickered only intermittently, Defoe was excellent.

Harry Kane remains England’s best centre-forward, but Defoe should now remain a part of any England squad for which he is fit, willing and able. Having rededicated himself to his sport, and as long as he can secure himself a move back to the Premier League in the summer (and almost every team below the top seven should be interested), there is no reason for the World Cup to be a pipedream.

And that, of course, will be where the real test for England begins. Southgate’s Under-21 record of routinely unstoppable qualifying campaigns before disappointing tournaments is, admittedly, a bit of a concern given the recent efforts of the seniors.

There is still on occasion a stilted nature to this England side when forcing themselves through the motions of qualification, but also reason for cautious optimism from much of their recent efforts against Spain and Germany in friendlies, where conventional football wisdom can be overturned and encouraging performances given greater credence than ultimately disappointing results.

England’s selection of a back three in Germany drew obvious comparisons to Premier League champions elect Chelsea, but Tottenham remain the more relevant touchstone for this England team. 

England/Spurs can play two or three at the back with a midfield screen in front. England/Spurs employ clever, technical number 10s operating behind a central striker, with most of the widths provided by full-backs.

The fact that at full strength five players would appear in both teams only makes this easier. As do various other glib comparisons between the two. They are simplistic and shallow, and very easy – I mean, they even wear the same kit. So let’s run through some of the others…

England/Spurs were absolutely brilliant in the 60s, achieving never-to-be-forgotten greatness under an inspirational leader. 

The 70s were a bit of a write-off and best forgotten about, but the 80s certainly had their moments. In the early 90s, England/Spurs briefly shone again thanks to the goals of Gary Lineker and a manager with the necessary people skills to get the best out of Paul Gascoigne, while the two decades since have been a series of false dawns of various degrees of promise under managers both foreign and domestic, qualified and unqualified. 

Ultimately, though, while England/Spurs have always been good enough to remain among the elite despite a few scares, they have never quite managed to recapture the greatness and success from a lifetime ago that supporters born long after it happened nevertheless feel absolutely entitled to.

For Spurs the current dawn is the brightest for many, many years under a manager who doesn’t favour the headline-grabbing histrionics of his contemporaries but is quietly building something special. It’s even possible that this dawn might not be a false one. 

Maybe, for the first time in many decades, England being Spurs might be no bad thing.