Impeccable: The minute's silence is observed by both sides at Wembley

For most of his 63 minutes Darren Bent was utterly isolated up front.

But when James Milner swept in a decent free-kick from wide left in the 49th minute, Bent rose to head on to the post. That wrong-footed Pepe Reina and allowed Lampard to stoop low and head in the rebound.

The late Charles Hughes, the architect of English long-ball football at the FA through the Seventies
and Eighties and a man scornful of the need to maintain possession, would have felt utterly vindicated.

The fact that England cannot hope to achieve significant results playing that way in the long term is a problem for another day.

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