England have qualified but Gareth Southgate now moves on to the harder part of his job - improving the team

The main focus of Southgate's improvements will be the midfield

Southgate knows improvements are needed to his squad (Getty)

“My job, my first objective, is to get the country to the World Cup finals,” Gareth Southgate said on Thursday night. “Then it is to make the team as good as we possibly can. And that is what I intend to do.”

Southgate has completed the first part of his task, with the 1-0 win over Slovenia which won qualifying Group F for England. But the poverty of that England performance only showed in sharper focus how much work Southgate has to do on the second part of his job.

They are, as he knows, a very long way away from being able to hold their own at the World Cup next summer.

This is the reality of international football. Holes cannot be filled with new signings and the only way to improve the team, short of bringing unearthed talent into the squad, is by coaching.

In the brief windows afforded by the calendar, an international coach must teach nuanced complex attacking moves to his players, so that they can play like a top club side even without having the resources of one. That is why an elite manager like Antonio Conte can make such a difference, as he showed with his Italy team at Euro 2016.

“The first objective is to qualify and we have done that,” Southgate explained. “Now we look at how we build and evolve the team and improve the team. That is the job of a coach because in international football you don’t have a chequebook of hundreds of millions. So we have to coach and work to improve people and to improve the team. That is the great challenge.”

The biggest question facing Southgate, and therefore facing England, over the next eight months is whether he can do this. The results of their November friendlies against Germany and Brazil, and their March friendlies too, are ultimately meaningless. Whether Southgate can use his limited coaching time at St George’s Park to turn England into a competitive unit is another matter.

What England need is a way of playing that allows these exciting players to create as many good goalscoring chances as they do in Premier League football. The clear evidence of England’s games under Southgate is that they do not do that. But packed defences are part of the reality of the international game, and unpicking them is one of international football’s key tasks.

“We will work with the team,” Southgate said. “There are lots of things we can look at. We know the direction we want to take the team in. But qualifying campaigns are tough, you're trying to evolve. The majority of qualifying matches are tough, there is a minimal number of goals because every team can be organised and difficult to break down. So we have to find a bit more creativity in our play to be able to break those teams down a bit earlier in matches, and allow those games to open up a bit.”

Southgate wanted to focus on the achievement (Getty)

Midfield creativity is the great problem for this English generation. Last year at Euro 2016, Roy Hodgson used Wayne Rooney in midfield and a patently unfit Jack Wilshere to try to spark England into life. It was a complete failure, while Ross Barkley was left on the bench and barely used.

Southgate must come up with his own answers to the same difficult problem next summer. Eric Dier and Jordan Henderson is clearly no solution and this England team is crying out for the return of Adam Lallana soon. Harry Winks is a purposeful passer but he has not even played one minute of senior international football so expectations must be tempered.

What England need is a way of breaking down massed defences. And once they do that, they need to be able to beat the superior teams too, playing in a very different way. Clearly there is plenty of work to be done.

“We played Iceland in the last Euros, we were favourites and we have to learn how to deal with being favourites,” Southgate said. “And if we are playing a team who have better players then we have to set up in a way to beat them.

“We have to be able to deal with everything. It is no use just being a team who play when they are favourites, or play when they are underdogs. You have got to be able to deal with both because you are going to have to face both scenarios. I don’t see any alternative.”