England - A case of the Emperor's new Waistcoast?

The records will show that our National team reached the semi-final of the World Cup.  If nothing else, it gave us something else to talk about other than the inability of our skies to squeeze out any water this Summer.

Overall the public, punters and the red-tops were happy with England's efforts over the past few weeks.  Pride restored.  Young lions roaring.  Southgate being compared to a root vegetable deferred for a month or two.

But, looking back dispassionately over the Tournament, was our effort really so glorious?  We beat Tunisia at the absolute death.  We beat non-league Panama with a mixture of penalties and flukes.  We needed penalties to overcome Colombia.  Even the relatively easy win over Sweden was summed up by a Man of the Match award for Pickford.

Tunisia / Panama / Colombia / Sweden

All teams we should beat every day of the week.  World Cup or pointless friendly.  Our record when the opposition could actually play football was a little different.

We lost easily to both Belgium's "A" and "B" teams, and were, frankly, swept away by Croatia, who pick from a national population roughly half that of London.

Our lack of goals from open play was perhaps explained by our numbing inability to actually create goal-scoring chances from open play.  Any midfield where Henderson is seen as the star, is always going to be lightweight.  Add to this the "efforts" of the supposed world-class Alli and Sterling, no wonder we were so reliant on the one-dimensional Harry Kane's penalties and the foreheads of our central defenders.

Has the England team improved?  Not sure.  We try to play a more "modern football" game.  With other nations this manifests itself with flowing, attacking football. With us, it seems to be reduced to our lumbering centre backs playing the ball in triangles with each other until getting into trouble and relying on the keeper to boot the ball down the park.

Fourth place?  Beyond our expectations certainly, but, even our most optimistic fan wouldn't claim that we were the fourth best team in the world.