Gareth Southgate's preparations for this winter's World Cup hit rock bottom on Friday night when his England side fell to Italy in Milan.
A performance devoid of confidence and attacking flair, England have now gone three games in a row without scoring and were subsequently relegated from their group. For a team that reached the World Cup semi-final in 2018 and final of Euro 2020, it is a sharp decline.
Needless to say, England's true performances will be judged in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. But it's not an ideal display heading into the major tournament and Chris Sutton, for one, was not impressed.
"If what Gareth Southgate wanted was a performance, then this wasn't it," he told the Mail. "It wasn't the kind of performance that makes you think as a fan that England are going to win the World Cup.
"When Southgate plays bigger sides, he's going to go with a back three but it was all pretty lacklustre. Whether previous results played into their minds, I'm not sure but there was a real lack of rhythm and continuity.
"They didn't get flowing all night. Neither side did. It's amazing to think these two were supposedly the best sides on the continent when they got to the final of the Euros last year."
He added: " It's not heavy metal football but it never has been under Gareth. Do we just have to accept this?"
Despite the result, Southgate insisted after the whistle that the performance was a step in the right direction. "It's difficult for me to be too critical of the performance," he said.
"We had more possession, more shots, more shots on target. For large parts of the game we played very well," he added. "It's a spell where ultimately results are going to be the thing that everyone reacts to but I thought there were a lot of positives for us as a team tonight.
"Lots of good individual performances. I personally thought the performance is a step in the right direction. I completely understand because of the result that is not going to be the reaction."
On England's lack of attacking potency, he said: "It's really difficult to pinpoint why we are not scoring. I think we are getting into the right areas. We had the moments where we would have the pass but we just didn't deliver that final piece of quality tonight."
At full-time some of the travelling support booed, to which Southgate said he can understand. "I understand the reaction at the end because that's the results we have had in this competition. It's an understandable emotional reaction," he said.
"There will be a huge amount of noise of course but that's been created from the summer really. I totally understand that. The players in the dressing room know that this is a game they could well have won."
