There was no Bukayo Saka or Cole Palmer in the England squad this month, nor Anthony Gordon for the second of Thomas Tuchel’s first two matches in charge after the Newcastle man was sent home early injured.
Phil Foden and Jarrod Bowen made a start apiece against Albania and Latvia without doing much to impress, while Eberechi Eze took
Marcus Rashford started both games, trying hard without end product, the nagging suspicion that his recall to not only the squad, but the XI, might have been a fraction premature.
Of the wide players left out on form grounds, Jack Grealish was the most high-profile and Callum Hudson-Odoi perhaps the most unlucky. Some had even wanted to see Jamie Gittens, the young Borussia Dortmund winger, or Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri handed an early shot in the team.
And where in all this was Jadon Sancho, the man who blazed a trail for English prospects through Dortmund, and who beat Rashford in escaping his own Old Trafford nightmare on loan?
A million miles from contention, it seemed, and instead at the centre of a £5million debate, over whether Chelsea might stump up that sum to send the winger back on what, even by Avanti West Coast standards, would be a rather expensive return to Manchester this summer.
The sense out of Stamford Bridge is still that the intention is to sign Sancho permanently at the end of the season, for the fee of around £20-25m that was agreed when he joined the club on loan on deadline day last year
