England vs Turkey: Roy Hodgson's Tottenham contingent promise to entertain in France

England's play at times was reminiscent of Ossie Ardiles' chaotic yet captivating Spurs side

Kane was one of five Tottenham players in Hodgson's starting line-up (Getty)

Fifty years ago, the boast around Barking and all along the Commercial Road as it swept through Dagenham, where Alf Ramsey was born, was that it was West Ham who had won it.

Should England lift the Henri Delaunay Trophy in Paris, there might be a similar cry along the Seven Sisters Road and into Finchley. The club will be different. It will be Tottenham.

There were five from the side Mauricio Pochettino had fashioned into the most formidable Spurs team since Jennings, Chivers and Perryman featured in the pages of the aptly-titled The Glory Game. The book of a season that finished with them lifting a European trophy, even if the final was against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

The instinctive way Dele Alli and Harry Kane combined for England’s first, admittedly offside, goal demonstrated what you can achieve when club partnerships are transferred to the international game.

However, there is a part of England’s game that does remind you of another Tottenham side. Not Pochettino’s young players, nor the team Bill Nicholson took to the Uefa Cup in 1972, but the Spurs of Ossie Ardiles, where the direction of play was always forward and the defence contained the resilience of a raspberry meringue left out in the rain.

Judging from the pattern of the three most recent friendlies, the remarkable victory in Berlin, the defeat to the Netherlands and this very open game in Manchester, England will go to France and entertain.

You would have to rewind to Portugal and Euro 2004 for a side that did that at a major tournament. Turkey may have been fortunate to qualify for France – they did so as the best third-placed team – but this was their first defeat in 13 matches.

Nevertheless, Roy Hodgson’s defence in France will be a dangerously fragile one. Of the back four that conceded Turkey’s first goal against England in international football, only Gary Cahill played in the Champions League this season.

Had John Stones been allowed to join him at Chelsea, he might have shared the kind of experience that should be essential to an international defender. It would be wrong to describe his season at Everton at disastrous but Roberto Martinez’s description of him as the best English defender since Bobby Moore proved, like those of a lot of the Everton manager’s statements, a little optimistic.

Kyle Walker may have thrown himself into a fabulous block to deny Cenk Tosun but Lee Dixon, commentating for ITV, counted six separate mistakes in the build up to Hakan Calhanoglu’s goal.

Before Jamie Vardy seized on an even more blatant Turkish error, Fatih Terim’s side was given enough opportunities to settle the match. England have kept one clean sheet in their last five internationals and but for Joe Hart’s fabulous save from Olcay Sahan, they would have drawn this match.

You wondered if Spain or Germany would be so careless once the real business begins and you wondered, too, if Hodgson’s side was not cashing in its ration of luck rather early. In Berlin they had seen Mario Gomez’s strike wrongly ruled out and now there was Kane’s offside goal. Terim, imperiously pacing his technical error, was so outraged by the decision that he kept watching replays of it on his mobile phone until it was taken from him. When it was returned, Turkey’s manager would not have wanted to use it to download a replay of England’s winner.