Lallana admits to England frustrations despite victory

And with England welcoming Spain to Wembley Stadium for a friendly on Tuesday night, Lallana reckons he and his colleagues have room for improvement.

“It was good to see the players come through a pressurised environment and win”, said Southgate.

“At this moment in time I feel really proud at the way they played, the way they went about their job”.

“We now have a different challenge to prepare for Spain, and the rest is out of my hands”.

But on the other side of the fence England seemed to just want to pass the ball at right angles for the large part, and it was only when the full-backs sent balls into spaces the Scotland defence were not quick enough or clever enough to occupy swiftly that the home side had any real joy. I’ve enjoyed working with them.

Strachan added: “I’ve got to go away and have a wee look at it now and we have a debrief”.

Telegraph Sport reported last week that candidates with an interest in the England job were being told to prepare for disappointment with the selection committee of Ashworth, FA chairman Greg Clark, FA chief executive Martin Glenn and adviser Howard Wilkinson determined to award the role to Southgate barring a disaster against Scotland. Like Scotland’s prospects of qualification, Strachan’s hopes of clinging on to his job look slim, but he was adamant he was not thinking of himself.

“If you think I’m thinking about myself, then you don’t know me”. “At the moment in time.it’s nothing to do with me”.

Winning is always a usual habit to get into, regardless of how you get over the line, and scoring goals will always give you a chance of recording successes. I don’t think I could ask any more in terms of what they have in their locker. Although acknowledging that improvement is obviously still needed in certain areas, Southgate feels that such a positive result will act as a real confidence boost for a group of players widely lambasted in the aftermath of their ugly exit from Euro 2016. “There are games that sometimes aren’t fair and that wasn’t fair”. Gary Cahill is no better either, and what England need to be assured of is that they will not be made to pay by better opponents in bigger fixtures. They’ve shown elements of what they’re capable of individually and collectively.

“The game was cruel to those players tonight”.

Despite the incidents, the Metropolitan Police’s football unit praised the atmosphere among the 87,258 supporters at Wembley as they respectfully observed the “Last Post”, which is played to commemorate those killed in war.

Indeed, the Daily Record took the rare step of not even bringing themselves to share a single photo from the game on their back page, such was their embarrassment at the result.

“Stewart Regan said to me he can’t believe it was 3-0 in Slovakia and 3-0 here”.

James Morrison’s effort was stopped by Hart as Gordon Strachan’s side tried to find a route back into the match. “But to approach the game in that manner and have the confidence to employ it, that was encouraging”. Last time we were thrown together in hard circumstances but this time he’s started to get his points across in training and it’s important we buy in and keep going.