FIVE goals. Three points. Top of Group 6. How odd therefore that so many of a capacity 90,000 crowd left Wembley unimpressed by England on Saturday.
There was no resolution to the debate about Frank Lampard's compatibility with Steven Gerrard, no sign Emile Heskey will ever make a significant goal contribution to go with all the unselfish, unseen work he does and no cohesion in a defence where As
hley Cole – thanks to a rare lapse in an England shirt – bore the brunt of the attention from a section of support who, it seems, can't help but boo.
So, maybe it is the missing bits of the convincing win over Kazakhstan that give genuine reason to cheer. If England can do this to limited, but worthy, opponents when they do not get it right, Croatia will not be alone in finding out what happens when they do.
Of course, you can do no more than beat the opposition put in front of you, no matter how laborious the display might have been at times.
It was a feature of Steve McClaren's short and ill-fated reign that England did not win the matches that matter – or some that were not supposed to – like Saturday, for example. But where McClaren's team stuttered to a goalless first half against Macedonia at Old Trafford two years ago, and then did the same after the interval, Fabio Capello's team talks appear to be more inspiring.
What had been a faltering performance – in which Kazakhstan goalkeeper Alexandr Mokin had little of note to do – England were suddenly, if not a team transformed, then one with a sense of purpose. True, they had to survive a bungled Kazakh opportunity right after the restart when both Sergey Ostapenko and the impressive Tanat Nusserbayev contrived to miss the target from six yards when the home defence, not for the first – or last – time went AWOL. But you sensed even if they had gone a goal down, England would have roared back.
In ditching Gareth Barry as a holding player, Capello was not so much placing his faith in the axis between Gerrard and Lampard as offering fresh impetus to Wayne Rooney. Isolated on the left, Rooney moved alongside Heskey at the start of the second half and at a stroke offered invention and movement the visitors found difficult to cope with.
Kazakhstan were still trying to solve the problem when Mokin foolishly darted from his goalline to reach a Lampard corner, allowing stand-in captain Rio Ferdinand to head into an empty net. Ferdinand's international career may still be defined to some by his missed drugs test. But the Londoner is a patriot as well as a class act – and his celebrations, having unluckily missed out on the permanent captaincy to John Terry, were richly deserved.
Rooney worried Alexandr Kuchma into an own goal shortly afterwards, but England's cruise to the final whistle was rudely interrupted by a well-taken strike by Zhambyl Kukeyev. Cole's woeful error, part of a generally awful display by the Chelsea man, cannot be overstated. However, did he really deserve such a negative reaction from a capacity Wembley crowd who had been asked for support by Capello?
As Cole withered away, Rooney took centre stage – gliding home Wes Brown's vicious cross before blasting in his second from an acute angle after David Beckham, now resigned to his role as substitute, had offered evidence there is life in the old dog yet.
In justifying the absence of Michael Owen from his squad, Capello had cited the recent performances of Jermain Defoe. Having replaced Rooney, Defoe repaid the faith by scoring again. It was the kind of replacement McClaren seemed incapable of.
At £6million a year, such instinct does not come cheap. But if England finally start to punch their considerable weight, it will look like a bargain.
The full article contains 658 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
