Euro 2020 Qualifiers: 3 reasons why England beat Bulgaria

England’s last two Euro 2020 qualifiers yielded ten goals and two wins, and this afternoon’s game against Bulgaria at Wembley didn’t prove to be much different. Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions beat their opponents 4-0 and now lead their group comfortably, looking on course to qualify for next summer’s tournament with ease.

With all that said, this wasn’t really a convincing performance and if anything, the 4-0 scoreline flattered England as they huffed and puffed through large periods of the game despite enjoying 68% possession and didn’t create too many clear-cut chances. But in the end, a hat-trick from Harry Kane and a goal from Raheem Sterling – his 7th for England in as many appearances – was enough to claim the three points.

Here are 3 reasons why England beat Bulgaria.

#1 Bulgaria were an extremely weak opposition

Bulgaria's negative tactics made it a tough game to watch

After tough games in the summer’s Nations League finals against the Netherlands and Switzerland, tonight’s game was never going to be as much of a challenge for England. As it turned out, it was tough in a different way; Bulgaria were simply terrible opposition, but their tactic of putting as many men behind the ball as possible made them tricky to truly open up.

The ridiculous thing is that when they made rare attacks on England’s defence, the Three Lions didn’t exactly look watertight. The first half saw Wanderson fire a shot directly at Jordan Pickford, while Galin Ivanov also missed a free header on goal. And in the second half, Wanderson again wasted a clear-cut chance when the game was still just 1-0.

That’s why it was so frustrating to see them simply look to shut England down and seemingly pray for a draw. England won 4-0 in the end anyway, so what did Bulgaria achieve with their negative tactics? Absolutely nothing. The truth is that they were always likely to lose this game – they’re just not close to England’s level right now – but to see them simply avoid any kind of attacking football was disappointing and in all honesty, rather pointless.

#2 England were rewarded for positive play

England's positive play was rewarded by four goals

It was a largely frustrating afternoon for England as not only did Bulgaria play an extremely negative game, but Southgate’s men also looked devoid of creativity through the midfield for great swathes of the game and thus didn’t create too many chances. Thankfully, during their rare periods of truly positive play, things paid off in the form of 4 goals.

Raheem Sterling – England’s best player by a mile in the first half in particular – was responsible for two of them, stealing the ball following some suicidal Bulgarian defending to feed Harry Kane in the first half, and then scoring England’s third from close range following Kane’s cross. The other two goals came from Kane via the penalty spot, but both spot-kicks were earned by positive attacking play, from Marcus Rashford and Kane respectively.

The issue, however, was that this positivity wasn’t shown nearly enough. Quite why Southgate chose Ross Barkley ahead of both Mason Mount – who appeared as a substitute – and James Maddison is a mystery given the superior form at club level of the latter two players. Barkley did perform well in March’s qualifiers but was poor in the summer against the Netherlands and simply doesn’t appear to offer enough in the creative role, particularly against stodgy opposition like tonight’s.

Tuesday’s opponents – Kosovo – are likely to operate with a similar gameplan so hopefully, Southgate will choose to go with a different midfield; Harry Winks would offer an upgrade on Jordan Henderson but the key must be to replace the ineffective Barkley with James Maddison or Mount.

#3 Harry Kane remains England’s most reliable goalscorer

Harry Kane now has 25 England goals in 40 appearances

Raheem Sterling might be on form right now and on his performances, he’s probably England’s most important player, but in terms of pure goalscoring, you simply can’t touch Harry Kane. Sure, the Tottenham man won’t score an easier hat-trick for England than today’s – one was a tap-in following a terrible piece of defending and two came from the penalty spot – but as the old adage goes, you’ve got to put the ball into the net and Kane does that.

His penalty technique seems to be the most reliable that England have been able to call upon since the days of Alan Shearer; outside of a rare miss against Turkey in 2016, Kane has found the net from the spot on 8 occasions, and there seems to be absolutely no doubt when he steps up that he’ll score.

Following tonight’s hat-trick, Kane now has 25 goals for England in just 40 games. That puts him at 14th in the all-time list, ahead of names like Geoff Hurst, Stan Mortensen and Kevin Keegan and just 5 away from Shearer, Nat Lofthouse and Tom Finney. More to the point, his average goals-per-game rate now stands at 0.625 – superior to Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton and Gary Lineker.

Given he’s only 26 years old and could have the best part of a decade ahead of him, would anyone bet against him managing to break Rooney’s record of 53 goals? If anyone can do it, it’s the current England captain.