No Contest

Before his first competitive match as England manager, Steve McClaren was asked how many goals he would find acceptable against the mighty Andorra. “A win is a win,” he said defensively, and you felt that if he’d been given the opportunity he was dying to add: “You can only beat what’s put in front of you.”

They’re so profound, those old clichés. So meaningful. And you can’t help thinking that it’s insight on that kind of scale that really makes an international manager. At first anyway.

Perhaps we should retain a sense of perspective. England faced a country (if that’s the right word) so small that most people don’t even know where it is. A team that has lost all of the qualifying matches it has played over the years – all 18 of them. An outfit so embarrassingly inept and so utterly clueless that it would have struggled to make an impact in the Nationwide Conference. A side that saw a lot of the ball, but not to touch.

On the face of it the 5-0 victory was comprehensive enough but it gave no real indication of the extent of England’s domination. What it did suggest, however, is that the home nation now has a shape, a sense of purpose and a level of enthusiasm that far outstrips anything we saw in the days of Swede F.A. And if those qualities are genuine and the foundations secure, neither the players nor the management will be inclined to get carried away by what happened at Old Trafford. Even some sections of the press and the public are tempted to.