After an enthralling, if goalless affair at Wembley, it finished 0-0 to Scotland. The Scottish roar at the final whistle was quickly met with loud boos from the England fans, and that pretty much told you all you need to know.
Despite having now played twice and failed to score, Scotland's performances so far in this competition have been encouraging, and they thoroughly deserved their point against an England team who didn't respond to the occasion and even looked rattled at times.
In the opening game the Czech Republic punished a decent Scotland performance with a cutting edge up front, but tonight England offered nothing of the sort and looked fairly ragged in attack. This was despite the wealth of talent they have at their disposal.
Speaking in the RTÉ studio after the game, Damien Duff and Liam Brady were strong in their criticism of the England performance, even going far as to write them off their pre-tournament billing as one of the favourites for the competition.
Damien Duff thinks Gareth Southgate doesn't know his best team and look anything but #EURO2020 contenders after their "awful" performance against Scotland.#RTESoccer #ENGSCO #ENG #SCO pic.twitter.com/AnhkZ6Wou9
— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) June 18, 2021
When asked by Darragh Moloney if he was taking England out of the list of front-runners, Duff seemed in little doubt that they were some way behind the likes of Belgium, Italy and France.
On the back of that - absolutely (would he rule England out). I know you can't go off one game but against Croatia, who were poor, yeah they were efficient, they got the job done. But that was awful tonight.
Scotland were brilliant, I'm so pleased for Steve Clarke, Stephen Reid, Stevie Woods, but England were awful. If you think about their attacking talent - world class, and they are at their clubs - but when they come and pull on an England shirt, I don't know whether it's the pressure, the media. You can hear the punters there tonight - they're on them. They were on them after 30 minutes against Croatia if you turned your volume up on the TV. I don't see it, I don't.
Liam Brady was only slightly less scathing towards the England performance than Duff, in that he mentioned some encouraging performances in defence and the fact that Scotland had been fortunate not to concede a penalty when Andy Robertson trod on Raheem Sterling's foot in the second half. But he called out the poor performances from a number of players in the England team including Declan Rice, Harry Kane, Luke Shaw and Phil Foden.
England were awful - I said it at half time and it didn't get any better in the second half. I thought in midfield the Scottish were better all round, quicker to move the ball. Their buildup play (England) was so slow...
I thought Rice was very, very poor. Phillips who had a very good game on Sunday - didn't show up tonight. Mount - didn't show up. And the three superstars, supposedly, the superstars they had up front - Sterling, Foden and Harry Kane - didn't show up either. Really, really poor.
I suppose Southgate will cling to the fact that they've got four points and can still qualify as winners. But I don't know. Too many players looked sluggish to me. I don't know whether it's been a long season...they've played a lot of football. And Harry Kane looks tired.
Foden, Sterling and Mount - the so-called creative players - they haven't really showed. In the two games against Croatia and Scotland , maybe three good chances they created in 180 minutes. For a team this talented, that's just not good enough.
Big incentive to win the group because it probably looks like France if they don't, so they could go out in the last 16 if they're playing like that. I fully expect them to qualify, but they could go out in the last 16 if they carry on playing like that.
This result now means England's qualification is not yet secured, so it will be interesting to see if the pressure starts to build on Gareth Southgate and his players as they head to Hampden Park for their final group game against the Czech Republic.
Damien Duff certainly knows who he'll be cheering for in that game; "I'll have to go get my Czech jersey out."
