England may have won every game so far and topped their pool at the Rugby World Cup, but very few people will come away from their recent fixtures thinking that they have any chance of winning the tournament.
There were concerns heading into the championship that England could fall flat in a pool containing Argentina and Japan, although those two teams failed to show up in the games against Steve Borthwick's side.
While their spot at the top of the pool was already secured ahead of yesterday's game against Samoa, where they were incredibly fortunate to emerge as 18-17 winners. The Samoans led for the vast majority of the game, only to lose their lead in the closing stages.
In the end, it was fair to say that England emerged an undeserved victors.
Dallaglio & Woodward troubled by England showing vs Samoa
England look set to face Fjij in a Rugby World Cup quarter-final, a game that will certainly be no gimme considering the recent form of the two teams. In fact, the Fijians came away as winners when the sides faced off in a warmup game at Twickenham back in August.
Yesterday's performance would do little to add to the confidence on the English side ahead of that one.
Speaking on ITV after the game, both Lawrence Dallaglio and Clive Woodward said that England were incredibly poor and lucky to come away as winners.
Dallaglio: It's just incredible, Samoa should have won that game by 10 or 15 points really. England will be scratching their heads wondering how they managed to win.
It was poor from us, really poor. The fundamentals in our game, the things Steve [Borthwick] and our coaches would pride themselves on - just the basics, they were missing.
There's a lot of questions. We went into the game talking about who is the right 9, 10, 12, based on tonight the whole bench should start next week. There's a lot of questions there...
Woodward: I just come back to the game against Fiji, England have got to be playing players in the right positions. We've got too many players out of positions. When people attack you, like Samoa did tonight when the kept the ball in hand, you're just not comfortable. You've got to get everybody back in their own position.
I think [Owen] Farrell or [George] Ford has got to play 10, Manu [Tuilagi] at 12, [Joe] Marchant into 13, get everyone back into their normal positions.
It's Ford or Farrell, to the (the experiment of playing both) is finished. You've got Ford or Farrell and you get everyone back in their normal positions. Marcus Smith has added something to the whole team now so he's got to play, but he's got to play at 15 and put [Freddie] Steward on the wing and go from there.
We've got to get people back in their positions and put some real pace in the team, because we were lucky tonight. Let's be clear about that, we were lucky to win that game.
England look set to play Fiji in a World Cup quarter-final next weekend, a game where a performance such as the one they produced yesterday will not be enough to get the job done.
From an Irish perspective, that would be no bad thing.
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