England fans finally have a stick to beat Gareth Southgate with

Well, that escalated quickly. This was an unsettling, deeply toxic night for Gareth Southgate and his England players, although mainly of course for Southgate himself, who will now find not just his feet, but his entire weary frame held to the fire of furious public opinion.

England came to Molineux looking to cap this weary, depleted Nations League silly season with a win, a sense of momentum regained. What they got was 90 minutes of pain, lactic acid, bruises and a sense, in the middle of it, the feeling of something beginning to drift out of sight.

As Southgate came on to the pitch at 90 minutes he was booed, angrily from all corners. There were shouts of genuine rage, of betrayal. This has of course been the backdrop to much of the last year. Southgate is England’s most successful manager of the modern age. Southgate is a decent, hard working bloke. Southgate has by any measure led England brilliantly.

But England’s fans don’t like Southgate, and even without a stick to beat him, Southgate has been beaten. Even without any record of defeat, only success, he has been labelled a failure. Even on a run of almost constant victory, goals, golden moments, England’s manager has been cast as a fraud and a killjoy.

Well, the public got what it wanted here. Finally some meat, some substance, an actual crime with which to charge the guilty man. Defeat to Hungary could be shaken off. A 4-0 home thrashing by Hungary, during which England simply disintegrated, is something else. This was a genuinely woeful performance to cap an eleven day odyssey that now reads, played four, lost two, drawn two, scored one (Kane, pen).

All teams, all sporting entities are a shared act of will, of spirit, of wanting this thing to work. And in the