Former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson, at Wembley for BBC Radio 5 Live, said: “This is the exact situation no England fan wants. We’ve talked about it for over a season with this World Cup coming up. What do England do without Harry Kane?
“This is what England and Thomas Tuchel do not want. He doesn’t have an answer to this question. Hence why we’re seeing this new formation again, with the interchange and false nine.
“We’ve spoken about Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Dominic Solanke, Ollie Watkins. Nobody stuck their arm up and said, ‘I’ll be his replacement’. that’s why we’re seeing this.”
Robinson added: “It was a very disappointing evening for Thomas Tuchel. The experiment that he tried in the first half with the front four clearly didn’t work.
“It didn’t take him long in the second half to change it. You do give England credit because when those changes were made there was a lot more cohesion.
“The one area that Thomas Tuchel has got a problem is if there is a problem with Harry Kane. If that happens, then England have a real problem after watching that.”
Tuchel answered the question about an over-reliance on Kane, saying: “Well, why would Argentina not rely on Lionel Messi, or Portugal not rely on Cristiano Ronaldo? This is totally normal. Key figures left camp for us and we saw that a bit.
“We lacked a punch in the last 20 metres in both matches. We encouraged the players. It was difficult for us.”
Kane’s potential absence is an immediate concern, leaving Tuchel short of viable alternatives when he needs them most, especially given these two toothless performances without him.
English strikers are suddenly a malaise.
Only 10 English strikers have appeared in the Premier League in the current campaign, with Chelsea’s 22-year-old Liam Delap the only one aged under 26.
Brighton’s Danny Welbeck, who turns 35 at the end of the month, might just have had a good international break by not being involved.
Welbeck and Calvert-Lewin are the only English strikers to have scored 10 or more Premier League goals this season – with 43 scored by English strikers.
It’s a far cry from the first season of the Premier League era in 1992-93, when 20 English strikers passed the 10-goal mark.
In recent years, however, what was already a steep decline has fallen off a cliff. Last season, only 67 goals were scored by English strikers, less than half the number in 2020-21.
Kane’s departure from Tottenham for Germany has played a part, of course, but he left for Bayern in 2023 and English strikers still scored 96 goals in 2023-24.
The cupboard is bare, underscoring just how indispensable Kane is.
This was a sobering night for England and Tuchel. This performance demonstrated that they simple cannot live without Harry Kane.