The Man Utd, Crystal Palace, and West Ham stars who must be included in England's make or break Slovenia clash

Well, then. If we must. Can I just begin by saying that I like my job? For the most part, it consists of me watching the sport that I have loved for as long as I can remember and writing silly little articles about it. I am a lucky boy. There are mornings, however, where I open my creaking laptop and every reluctant hammer of the crumby keyboard feels like a chore. This is one of those mornings.

England were bad against Denmark on Thursday afternoon. Very bad. So bad that tepid optimism gave way to exasperation gave way to blunt apathy. And now I have to conjure up 1,000 words or so about it. So, here goes.

For a while now, people have been asking about Gareth Southgate’s tactics. ‘Where are the tactics?’, they enquire. ‘When are you going to get the tactics? Why aren't you getting the tactics now?’ And so on. So please, the tactics. At long last, I believe I have the answer; England are inimitable pioneers of the ‘Smash and Drab’. Score early - preferably somewhat against the run of play - take your collective foot off the proverbial gas, hope against hope that your opponents are simply bored into stony petrification. To paraphrase Alan Partridge, that’s languid football!

This is not a revelatory criticism, of course. The Southgate naysayers, seething and unexpectedly bohemian in their protestations as they are, have long since disregarded the Waistcoated One as hyper-conservative or irrecoverably prosaic. In fairness to the mob, England’s showing thus far at Euro 2024 has done little to dispel those gripes. The Three Lions are playing like caged lions, pacing back and forth, pulling clumps of their own fur out as they fret, generally projecting a look of abject glumness.

Their cause is not helped by the fact that Euro 2024 writ large has been so moreishly arresting - a symphony of screamers and dreamers and full-head-of-steamers, three times a day, every day, no questions asked. By contrast, England have been unrelentingly purposeless, an existential nihilist in a party hat waiting for their turn in pass the parcel. This is chiaroscuro in practice, the footballing equivalent of Eeyore running the Grand National, a funeral dirge on a nightclub dancefloor. There have been two genuinely humdrum matches played in Germany, and both have involved Southgate’s men.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with dreariness, by definition. Good things can be boring, and boring things can be good. Like Japanese public transport timetabling, for instance. England, however, have not been tedious in an efficient, bureaucratic sense, but more in an ‘Is that rodent lying face down in the middle of the road dead or just not moving?’ sort of way.

Harry Kane, poet laureate elect, perhaps summed up the state of affairs as succinctly as is humanly possible during his post-match press duties in Frankfurt. ‘I think we’re struggling both with and without the ball’, he mused. Which, y’know, literally covers the entirety of conscious existence. That being said, the skipper, plodding about in his Skechers like a geriatric in a TJ Hughes, is not exactly wrong.

Throughout the team, there were failed experiments and nightmarish damp squibs galore. Trent Alexander-Arnold - very much thrown in at the deep end of a deep-lying midfield role - is a quarterback with nobody to hit and lacking in the wherewithal to do anything other than fire Sisyphean diagonal after Sisyphean diagonal into the eternal nothingness, like lovelorn text messages drunkenly sent to an ex who has long since blocked your phone number and very much moved on with their life. Phil Foden, bless him, spends most of his time on the left flank like a moth bashing against the outer skin a lampshade, desperately trying to find a way inside but then never looking overly sure as to what he is meant to do once he gets in there. Declan Rice, usually so dependable, jittered around the engine room like he had a tiny James McClean on his shoulder whispering ‘You’re an over-hyped fraud, and everybody thinks your Vanilla Ice impression is crap’ in his ear at regular intervals.

And then there is the left-back problem. Kieran Trippier, it should be said, is not playing terribly. Or, at least, no more terribly than anybody else in an England shirt at present. But his stubbornly right-footed presence on the opposite flank - exacerbated by Foden’s yearning to be anywhere but - has left the Three Lions feeling imbalanced and clunky, as if the entire team is wearing one espadrille and one garish pleather platform boot with a dead goldfish floating in the sole.

After Sunday’s underwhelming win over Serbia, there was a feeling that perhaps certain members of Southgate’s eleven simply needed to time to settle and adapt to their unfamiliar posts. Now, you suspect that persisting without meaningful change would be akin to criminal negligence.

But all hope is not lost just yet. Honestly. England are still unbeaten - even if a 1-1 draw has never felt more like a defeat - still on course to win their group. There also appears to have been a sudden and holistic acknowledgement that something has got to give. Maybe this was rock bottom. Maybe the only way is up.

In material terms, that likely means that Trent will lose his starting role in midfield against Slovenia on Tuesday night. Conor Gallagher has been Southgate’s preferred replacement for the Liverpool talisman thus far, but it would be pleasing to see either Old Trafford boy prince Kobbie Mainoo or Crystal Palace’s freakishly metronomic Adam Wharton given a chance to stake their claim.

Likewise, as blasphemous as it may feel, perhaps it is time to replace Phil Foden with an actual winger. Eberechi Eze and Anthony Gordon are both natural options, while Jarrod Bowen, despite playing on the right for West Ham, is left-footed. And then there is Luke Shaw. If England’s only recognised left-back is even halfway fit, Southgate has to consider parachuting him in. The alternative is another 90 minutes of watching Trippier approach the role as if he is performing keyhole surgery blindfolded.

Ring these changes, inject a dose of guilt-infused urgency, and maybe, just maybe, England can turn things around at Euro 2024. Fail to do so, and they will get thoroughly pestled by whichever genuine heavyweight they cross paths with first. And that would be a shame, because you suspect that in such an eventuality, it would not only be their tournament, but Southgate’s tenure too, that ended in rueful ignominy.