England were poor in scraping a late lucky win against Iceland, but James Ward Prowse can take satisfaction in a solid performance after playing the full 90 minutes.
Gareth Southgate went for youth in picking this England side, he started the latest wonderkids Sancho, Rice & Foden with James Ward Prowse in, not to play a role similar to his one at Saints where he is there to deliver the through balls and dead ball situations, but more as the man to keep the ball flowing and feed the superstars.
This he did well, he won the ball on numerous occasions and then moved it on quickly to those whose job it was to create the magic, his performance reminded me very much of the job that Steve Davis used to do for Saints, as Lawrie McMenemy would say, he was a hod carrier not the violinist, but both are needed and both need to do their jobs well, Ward Prowse did, many of his team mates didn't.
But if Ward Prowse's job was to move the ball quickly to get the hosts on the back foot, both the new wonder kids and the more established stars failed time and time again to deliver.
They seemed to always want to showboat, I lost count of the number of times that certain players seemed to want to juggle the ball at their feet before actually trying to take an opponent on.
The youngsters seemed to constantly try to do the spectacular rather than pass the ball to those in better positions.
To put it bluntly Gareth Southgate sent out the wrong messages when he picked those inexperienced even at club level to take on Iceland, it smacked of a little bit of arrogance and it back fired.
It wasn't just the youngsters though the likes of Raheem Sterling also failed to many times to create chances for themselves or others.
England's game was all about taking on players in the final third, when perhaps it should have taken a leaf from the goal disallowed wrongly for offiside in the first half when a glorious ball was foreced home at close range by Harry Kane.
That showed how to unlock the home defence which seemed at times to be the entire side, Kane barely had a chance after this game, too often he was left making runs in the centre with the ball never coming.
This was the case as well for Danny Ings who came on for the last 20 minutes, this was a game that cried out for his guile, his ability to pull defenders out of position to create space for others, but by the time he was brought on the die was cast and with Kyle Walker being sent off with 20 minutes left it gave the home side impetus and made things that much harder.
England got lucky late on, the ref gave us a dubious penalty which we tucked away but the lead lasted barely a minute, the ref seemed to feel he had erred with the England spot kick and he would have had a point, so he seemed to want to redress the balance, if it was a foul it was initially outside the box, but I thin the refs conscience won over the reality of the situation, luckily for England the spot kick was blazed way over the bar.
So a poor night for England , but a good days work for James Ward Prowse who played the game he was asked to play and did the job well.
Danny Ings wlll be pleased to get another Engalnd cap, but disappointed that those whose job it was to supply the strikers failed to do so in the last 20 minutes just as much as they did in the first 70.