England's World Cup group might actually be the hardest as interesting calculations emerge

England fans are feeling pretty smug about their draw for the 2022 World Cup.

While there is so no such thing as an easy group in football’s biggest tournament, the general consensus is that the Three Lions should be pretty satisfied with what came out of the hat on Friday night.

Gareth Southgate’s men were one of the top seeds for the draw at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, duly ending up as the lead nation within Group B.

In a rerun of the infamous clash at the 2010 finals in South Africa, the United States of America were the first team to be drawn alongside England as arguably the weakest nation from Pot 2.

Next up were Iran, which was once again perceived to be a favourable match-up, before England’s final dance partner turned out to be the victor of the final European qualifying matches.

Southgate and co will have to wait until the summer to find out whether they’ll be locking horns with Wales, Scotland or Ukraine with the possibility of an all-British derby looming large.

So, all in all, England are feeling pretty satisfied with a group that looks – on paper – to give them a much easier run to the round of 16 than other contenders to go all the way have on their hands.

But what if that’s not actually the case? What if we’ve all been duped into thinking that England have been given an easier draw when actually it’s much, much harder than it looks?

Well, believe or not, there’s actually some evidence to suggest that’s the case because some fascinating research from journalist Nick Harris found that England’s group might genuinely be the hardest of all.

As crazy as that might sound, Harris calculated that Group B actually had the highest average position in the FIFA World Rankings, meaning that the teams