The simple switch which changed everything for Hodgson

Of course, Twitter is perhaps not the most reliable barometer of prevailing public opinion (because if it is, lord help us all), but if you take a look at the replies aimed at any national newspaper journalist who dared to suggest England had played well in their 2-0 win over Switzerland, then you will encounter a populous who have decided that England are terrible, and nothing will convince them otherwise.

It’s tough to see how anyone who paid the slightest attention to the game in Basel on Monday night could see anything but, at worst, a good and much-improved England performance, with some fine individual showings along with some admittedly slightly shaky defending. But still, some remain to be convinced. England has, and always will be, a tough crowd.

It was all so simple, too. Scott Murray’s excellent piece on Roy Hodgson this week was accurate in the mindset that the England manager appears to have adopted, but for this game Hodgson made a very straightforward decision, which was to identify the best attacking options available to him, and mould his team around that. An easy conclusion to reach, one might think, but a conclusion that many so often ignore in favour of stubbornness.

For the majority of his England reign, Hodgson has stuck to slight variants on a 4-4-2 formation, with rotating personnel but basically the same approach. Latterly the system has masqueraded as a 4-2-3-1, but given that the undroppable Wayne Rooney has been the central man in the attacking three, it has basically been two men up front rather than three in midfield. The system was in place because of Hodgson’s slightly understandable reluctance to drop Rooney, given the excellence he is occasional capable of, and was thus designed to keep him in the side. The team was built to accommodate Rooney, when there were perhaps better options available.

Monday night saw a shift, and perhaps a hugely important moment as this still young team develops, in that the team was designed to get the best from another player, rather than the England captain. Rooney was retained, but behind him the midfield was arranged in the much-discussed diamond formation, with Raheem Sterling at its point, allowing the Liverpool man to provide an attacking threat from the middle in much the same way as he often does for his club side.

It’s devastatingly simple logic. Look at the options available, identify your biggest asset, and design a plan to get the best from those two things. England’s squad for the Switzerland game was diminished by a combination of retirements and injuries to leave Hodgson with three wingers, two of which (Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Andros Townsend) aren’t first-choices for their club side and were potentially carrying injuries, so it would seem pointless to shoehorn them into a formation that required two wingers for the sake of a pre-determined system.

That, combined with the direct threat that Sterling can provide when positioned in the centre, meant a change in approach was the most sensible way forwards. Jack Wilshere sat deep and attempted to start attacks from in front of the defence, while Jordan Henderson and Fabian Delph were asked to do most of the running, tasks all three succeeded in - perhaps with varying degrees of success, but success all the time.

And, just like the best and simplest plans are wont to do, it worked, with Sterling a constant menace (in the second half in particular), setting up the first with a brilliant cross and being heavily involved in the second, while Danny Welbeck produced one-and-a-half splendid finishes (we’ll assume he intended to shin the first goal in…) and even Rooney went against recent England form and had some nice moments. England didn’t sit back and wait for the higher-ranked side to come at them, but rather attacked in a manner that Hodgson’s comments after the Norway game didn’t suggest would happen.

This is not to say Hodgson has cracked it. Scott Murray’s criticisms remain valid, and while the common consensus that this was England’s toughest test of the qualifying campaign is correct, that’s a relative term. The expansion of the European Championships means that England would have to make a pretty special effort not to qualify, and from this point Hodgson could probably play Sterling at centre-back and get away with it. Equally, the performance in Basel was far from flawless: there were as many near-calamitous individual errors in defence as there were vital blocks, while Rooney didn’t do quite enough to suggest his place in the team should be automatic and John Stones struggled at times, although he should be given a pass as he has played most of his football for Everton in the centre of defence, not the right.

And the enormous, bright, neon-lit caveat is of course that we’ve been here before, many times with England. An encouraging performance in qualification leads to suggestions of greater success further down the road, before the inevitable disappointment comes and everyone is back to where they started.

But it might be churlish to point that out now. Hodgson made a simple choice, to use the players at his disposal in the way that would suit them best, rather than him and his traditional approach, and it worked. And they say the England manager has an impossible job; easy, this…