Argentina defeat clouds Jones's selection philosophy against Japan

LONDON : With New Zealand and South Africa waiting in the wings, England's game against Japan this Saturday was set to be the fixture where Eddie Jones could experiment - but after Sunday's defeat by Argentina, he now has a selection dilemma.

Does the coach give some test match time to the many members of his squad who are so desperately short of it, or does he stick with the bulk of his first-choice team and bench in a bid to find the "cohesion" that was so sorely missing in Sunday's 30-29 defeat?

Jones said afterwards that there was nothing structurally wrong with England's performance in a game where they had almost 70 per cent possession, but that they allowed the Pumas to stay in the game due to a succession of individual mistakes and bad decisions.

While true, that analysis also glosses over England's failure to build any sort of sustained backline attacking momentum as the Marcus Smith-Owen Farrell 10/12 combination again failed to spark, even with the presence of Manu Tuilagi outside them for the first time.

Many fans were bemused by Jones's selection of Ben Youngs to start at scrumhalf. With Youngs having now played 118 times for England, the coach knows all there is to know about him, yet Jack van Poortvliet, who sparked England's turnaround in the summer tour of Australia when he replaced Youngs, was relegated to the bench.

The fact that Van Poortvliet showed the speed of thought and deed to dart from a ruck to score England's second try less than a minute after joining the fray merely underlined the strangeness of the decision, but England fans have long given up trying to understand their coach's selection policy.

Jones will surely make some changes but he will also have a very strong memory of what happened last