England’s maverick Jack Grealish plays his part but cannot create liftoff

What did we learn? How did it feel? What were the bullet points, the red lines, the notes of glory in this goalless Nations League international in an empty stadium between two teams who spent long periods of this game struggling against some invisible plane of resistance, like flies buzzing down a window pane?

As competitive games go this one stretched the semantic limits of the word “competitive” into some interesting new spaces. At times it felt like a late July club tour practice game. As the ball was shuttled sullenly around the back of midfield you half expected to look at the team sheets and see “A Triallist” listed.

For all that, Molineux is a lovely place to play; a fun, clanky cantilevered thing that rises up above the houses and the trees, its golden stands faded just a little to the colour of processed cheese. Here it was of course empty, apart from a knot of children in one stand. What a wonderful idea to take England’s empty stadium around the country in this tournament year.

And as ever there are always patterns, glimmers of meaning, stars that must rise and fall in these games. Two mildly interesting things did happen here. The first was Jack Grealish starting for England, as is the constant low-level public demand, the cry from the sidelines for the People’s Jack. So much so it was tempting to ask before this game what would be the better outcome for Gareth Southgate: Grealish plays well, solving a problem? Or Grealish plays badly, also solving a problem?

English football has always loved a cause célèbre. It is a grand old tradition, a reflex, folksy kind of thing. But Grealish is also a strange kind of cause, mainly because the yearning for his presence is based more in an idea of what he might do, a