Rating the players as Maguire heads feeble Three Lions to a point

Well that was both frustrating and boring, but this England always have at least one of these sorts of games in them at major tournaments. Calm down, it’s going to be fine.

Anyway, we’ve rated the players. Well done, Harry. No, not that one.

JORDAN PICKFORD
Didn’t do much other than watch the ball cannon off his crossbar from Christian Pulisic’s shot and flap at a corner. He spent the rest of the time shouting at his teammates, as is his wont, and ours after watching that, to be fair.

KIERAN TRIPPIER
The left side was more productive than the right despite England’s obsession with attacking down Trippier’s side in the first half in particular. Some nice one touch passes to slip Saka in a couple of times early on but that avenue was shut down pretty quickly.

HARRY MAGUIRE
“Kicked the ball out of play,” as Roy Keane was very keen to highlight at half-time, and did a weird bear hug on no-one in particular to clear space for Weston McKennie’s excellent chance in the first half.

But he played a couple of excellent diagonal passes and got it through the lines when he could. He also did the bits of ‘proper defending’ that he tends to do well really bloody well – the booming headers from Pulisic’s surprisingly good corners, the interceptions and stepping in to win the ball a la Bobby Moore.

Maguire’s footballing demons may well hurt England at some point, but those demons don’t appear to affect him getting his noggin on it. Good for him.

JOHN STONES
Gareth Southgate said his and Maguire’s use of the ball was “outstanding and people don’t appreciate that”. You can count us among those people. The one moment of his we remember was the point in the second half when he kept the ball for what felt like 30 seconds before booting it forward straight to the goalkeeper before waving his arms in the air. Other than that it felt like he passed it aimlessly and endlessly to Maguire or the full-backs.

LUKE SHAW
Probably the best of the lot other than Maguire. That obviously wasn’t a high bar and is only really based upon a couple of free-kicks in the second half, the first of which no bugger attacked and the second of which saw Harry Kane get his header all wrong.

DECLAN RICE
Reverted to the plain Rice of four years ago before it was chickened and fried. He sat in front of the defence and made some crucial blocks in the box but wasn’t the progressive force we’ve become more accustomed to and enjoyed more…