England 1-1 Russia

There was silence on Saturday night across England, followed by head-scratching and looks of disbelief.

That same look is strewn across the same faces this morning as fans try to work out how England drew against Russia.

To point the blame at Roy Hodgson and his substitutions would be extremely harsh — though that has been the port of call in the pubs and on social media in the aftermath of Saturday’s match. They had worked.

While Wayne Rooney had a very good game, Jack Wilshere is a natural centre midfielder and added a sense of composure and technical skill in the middle of the park.

Raheem Sterling took his club form into the Euros and should have been hauled off a lot earlier than he was.

But his replacement, James Milner, was the ideal player to bring on when defending a 1-0 lead. Had Hodgson brought on Jamie Vardy and England conceded, the England boss would have been vilified for not attempting to close the game out.

Defensive frailties were a concern going into the tournament and there shouldn’t be much surprise that England conceded a late goal to throw away two points. Russia had two shots on target, scoring one goal.

England had plenty of chances to see the game out but a superb save from Igor Akinfeev in the Russia goal to prevent Rooney and plenty of shots down the goalkeepers throat meant that 1-0 was always going to be a dangerous scoreline to try to defend.

Vasili Berezutski’s injurytime equaliser cancelled out Eric Dier’s free-kick, with Hodgson saying after that the draw a was a “tough pill to swallow.” He said: “To say we’re bitterly disappointed would be an understatement.

“To get that close to a victory, which would have been deserved, then to lose it with one minute of injury time to go, it’s a tough pill to swallow.

“But that’s football. One doesn’t have a divine right to win any game. It doesn’t make it any easier for me to accept.

“But it won’t take us long to get over it. When we analyse the game, and start preparing for the next game, there’ll be a lot of things from tonight’s game that we’ll want to take forward and hopefully we’ll be able to put the memory of that last-minute goal behind us.”

Unlikely set-piece specialist Dier said the players were “disappointed after the final whistle. “Our emotions went from a high to a low pretty quickly,” he admitted.

“Obviously it’s disappointing because we were so close to an important and big win in our first game.

“But this is tournament football. We have more games to look forward to. We have to pick ourselves up and look forward.  This game is behind us now so we have to take our positives from this.”

Reflecting on the moment when he left the net bulging with the sweetest strike of his professional career Dier, who collected David Beckham’s autograph as a 10-year-old living in Portugal during Euro 2004, added: “It’s probably one of the best moments I’ve had in football, a fantastic moment.

“I’d have taken a win with anyone else scoring but I’m happy to have scored and just disappointed we didn’t win it.

“Beckham was one of the best at those free-kicks and I’ve seen lots of clips of his free-kicks. I’ve practised them a lot since I was a kid.”

Attention now turns to the must-win Wales match on Thursday afternoon.

Even in a tournament where it is almost impossible for a “decent” side to not get beyond the group stages, failure to beat Wales would leave England on the brink of an early exit from Europe, which could be a sign of things to come ahead of the EU referendum.