This was always going to be the toughest test for Stephen Kenny in the early days of his Ireland tenure.
A young England side brimming with top-level Premier League talent is quite a different beast to Finland, Wales or Bulgaria in the Nations League and so it proved.
The Ireland manager will be disappointed with the nature of Harry Maguire’s opening goal and the second scored by Jadon Sancho and, with Wales to come on Sunday, there isn’t too much time to turn things around.
It’s now six games in charge for Kenny with just one goal scored – Shane Duffy’s equaliser away to Bulgaria – and confidence in the camp has taken a bit of a hit, as Matt Doherty told RTE afterwards.
“It was quite tough,” Doherty said.
“They have world class players everywhere and potential world class players. We’re disappointed with the goals we conceded. It’s never nice to lose 3-0 and have the ball knocked round you a bit towards the end. We’re finding it tough at the moment.”
Ireland now head for Wales and the penultimate match in their Nations League group against a side who took a point in Dublin last month. Doherty - who played at left-back in the defeat at Wembley rather than his usual position on the opposite side – reckons he and his teammates need to be a bit braver on the ball and not let heads drop when a mistake is made.
“We have to switch on straight away, recover well today, tomorrow and the next day,” he said.
“We should stay confident. If I could say anything to the lads it’d be keep the heads up and stay confident. Keep trying to do the right things, keep getting in the right positions and it’ll turn for us. We’ve got to make sure that we focus as much as we can defensively and keep solid and keep clean sheets. Keep trying to do the right things going forward, be brave on the ball and not get the head down whenever we misplace a pass or something doesn’t work out for us.”
An empty Wembley meant the fixture didn’t have quite the same bite as it usually would when these two teams meet and that may well have made it easier for a few players in particular, no more so than Jack Grealish who would likely have taken quite a bit of stick from Ireland fans in the ground under normal circumstances given his previous allegiances to the green shirt.
However, the Aston Villa man was impressive on just his second start for England and said afterwards that the international experience has helped his game quite a bit.
“It was obviously good to get my second start. I thought we controlled the game well and obviously it’s always nice to get the win,” Grealish said afterwards.
“I know that I could have scored at least a couple and I could have probably assisted more. Coming here and training with these guys day in day out for two weeks steps up everything about your game and especially it has with mine. Watching the way Harry (Maguire), Jordan Henderson and Raheem Sterling are day to day and how they train, even in training you learn stuff off these guys.”
