Harry Maguire blunders are a warning to England – right now he is not up to it

We will meet again: at the Khalifa International Stadium, Doha in eight weeks’ time as a matter of fact. In the meantime, if this really is to be a final trip to Wembley for Gareth Southgate as England manager then it was at least a fun, loose, slightly wild Nations League dead rubber 3-3 draw, a match that sprung up off the gurney in the most unexpected fashion.

At times in the first half at Wembley it felt as though 79,000 people had accidentally wandered into the same stadium and were now stoically seeing it out. For 49 minutes almost nothing happened. Then suddenly everything happened, all the things, a kind of tantrum of football.

Still, for all the demob happy stuff, there were two elements of clarity.

Notes of life, and notes of warning. Which of these will Southgate listen to?

The good bits were obvious enough. Bukayo Saka and Mason Mount came on with 25 minutes to go and changed not just the game, but the vibes, the energy, the smell of Late Gareth. Mount scored a brilliant goal and played with some real anger. Saka was electric on the right, a magnet for the ball, touch so sure, so relentless in his search for angles, weakness, ways past.

The story here will be that revival from 2-0 down. But for Southgate, who talks always about performances and underlying metrics, it must also be the process that took them there, and a display of terribly poignant, terribly muddled defending by Harry Maguire. When do warning signs stop being warning signs and just become things, bad things happening? Southgate spoke after about not being “wishy-washy”, not reacting to “noises”. But loyalty is also the easier path sometimes.

It began on 50 minutes. Maguire made the moment, taking a loose ball and passing it straight to a