It's two years this month since Gareth Southgate was jeered by his own team’s supporters after England lost to Italy in Milan to confirm their relegation from the top section of the Nations League.
It didn’t seem all that important at the time. It was the proximity of the slump in form to the Qatar World Cup that was of greater concern. But it is Lee Carsley and his attempts to reinvent and reinvigorate the national team that are being impacted now.
It’s a good competition, the Nations League. It has filled dates traditionally reserved for friendlies with competitive games and that’s useful. In its first year back in 2019, England came close to reaching the final, one of the early stepping stones towards improvement and relevance for Southgate and his team.
Sadly for the current version of England, their demotion from the business end means that for now meaningful and testing fixtures against the likes of Germany, Italy, France and Portugal – for example – have been replaced with evenings like this. A game against a team ranked 63rd in the world from which it was preciously difficult to learn anything at all.
We saw once again that Harry Kane knows how to score goals. These were two belters for the century man. Finland goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky dived for both but it’s doubtful he saw them as they whizzed by. Maybe he heard them.
Harry Kane scored a brace as England secured a 2-0 victory at home over 63rd-ranked Finland
It is hard for England and Lee Carsley to know where they stand as they are not facing the elite
We also saw another performance of great promise from Anthony Gordon and another reminder of the passing range of Trent Alexander-Arnold. All good.
But with Finland sitting deep in their own half and playing – maybe even praying – for survival from the very first minute, what did this really tell us? England had upwards of 75 per cent of possession. After half an hour England defender John Stones had completed more passes – 45 – than the whole of the Finland team who had 41.
On the one hand, a Nations League group that also contains the Republic of Ireland and Greece offers interim coach Lee Carsley a palatable run of games in which to make himself comfortable. But in terms of the growth of this group of players, and maybe the coach too, the horizons feel limited and that’s a shame.
England are, as it happens, the only major European nation to have slipped in to the second pool. Carsley’s team are ranked fourth in the world and the closest team to them in terms of FIFA’s standings in this section are Ralf Rangnick’s Austria at number 22.
So the issue is clear. Carsley can only do what he can do. He can only send out teams to beat what is in front of them. In beating the Republic of Ireland on Saturday, England were impressive. Greece beat the Irish by the same 2-0 scoreline in Dublin on Tuesday night, mind.
Here, at a not quite full Wembley, England were sporadically if not consistently fluent. They deserved to win and probably would have done so by more had an early Kane header not been ruled out for offside.
Jack Grealish expressed himself away from the tactical restrictions of Pep Guardiola
Anthony Gordon produced another encouraging display on the senior international stage
There was further encouragement as Trent Alexander-Arnold showed his passing range
There was no jeopardy and there's unlikely to be much in any of the Nations League games
This felt from the off like a night where the first goal had the capacity to ruin the Finns if it arrived early. Fortunately for them – and at times they were a little lucky – it didn’t and that enabled them to apply a veneer of respectability to the result.
This was competitive football in name only. There was no jeopardy and that’s the key. There is also unlikely to be much when Greece come to London next month and then England travel to Helsinki to face Finland again three days later.
Gordon and Alexander-Arnold were not the only players to perform impressively here. Angel Gomes of Lille – the first French-based player to debut for England since Trevor Steven in 1992 – was tidy and progressive with his passing while Jack Grealish continued to enjoy expressing himself freed from the tactical restrictions of his club manager Pep Guardiola.
And, yes, England were better than they were when slogging their way through the Euros against Serbia and Slovenia and Slovakia and the rest. Southgate’s team played weary end of an era type football in Germany and this was not that. England have possessed an impetus and a direction under Carsley thus far and that reflects well on the 50-year-old.
Context is not necessarily the interim manager’s friend this morning, though. The truth is that we will not know what he has got on the big occasion unless his spell in temporary charge is extended beyond these six games or indeed he is awarded the position permanently between now and this competition’s end in November.
Angel Gomes, making his second senior appearance for England, caught the eye again
England will win their four-team group, for sure. Promotion back to the big boys’ land of pool A will be theirs soon enough. The experiences of Germany 2024, however, told us that this England team has some serious growing and developing to do.
Whether six relative shooting matches down among the Nations League dead men helps them with that is the pertinent question.