Amid the tired legs and loose passes of Senegal defeat, the Crystal Palace star enjoyed his best England game to date
The beer cups are not yet being hurled. Tabloid editors have not yet decided which root vegetable would Photoshop best onto his face. Helicopters are not yet being despatched to take aerial shots of his house. We are still probably at least two defeats away from our first World War Two-themed front page.
But perhaps in hindsight, this was the week Thomas Tuchel finally became the England manager. The night he finally felt the weight of the hairshirt. Finally glimpsed the depth and darkness of a job in which all defeats are humiliations, where the default temperature is set permanently to “scorn”, where every decision is a betrayal of somebody, somewhere.
And, you know, fair enough. Ahead of this camp you would probably have got pretty long odds on England emerging from games against Andorra and Senegal with a negative goal difference. England have neither attacked well nor defended well, and indeed have looked for the most part exactly what they are: a group of exhausted talents sapped by a long season in the most physically demanding league on the planet.
Trevoh Chalobah and Levi Colwill were a weird choice of centre-half pairing given both are still trying to pace themselves for a gruelling Club World Cup campaign. Kyle Walker had seemingly prepared for an 8pm rather than a 7.45pm kick-off. Bukayo Saka did four-fifths of very little. Conor Gallagher skittered around like a puppy at Sunday lunch: darting in between legs, knocking things over, eternally sniffing something out, but largely at a loss as to what.
