EFFICIENT England are through, top of the group, and have not yet conceded a goal… But you can’t help but think it has to get better than this if we are to beat the big boys.

Gareth Southgate’s pragmatic side continues to challenge us to quantify the contents of our glasses.

On one hand Jack Grealish shone for 45 minutes, Bukayo Saka showed some enterprise, Raheem Sterling scored again and Harry Kane, well, showed marginally more than he did in the opening two games.

England were good in the first half, albeit not quite as rampant as some of the ITV punditry might have suggested.

On the other hand, whatever Southgate said to his team at half time appeared to have a numbing effect. It was Invasion of the Bodysnatchers stuff as the same bodies ran around Wembley in white shirts with absolutely none of the energy.

That the man of the hour Grealish created the winning goal for Sterling with a perfectly weighted cross will at least supply us all with something to take from the night.

As the ball hit the back of the net there was an almighty noise, not the cheering of 20-odd thousand inside the stadium but from the tip-tapping of hundreds of thousands of keyboard and phone screens and fans raced to tell Southgate: “I told you so!”

In fairness, the Czechs did not play with the same defence-first mentality that Scotland did last Friday night, so there were plenty more pockets of space for England to exploit when they ventured forward.

The difference here, of course, was that they actually looked bothered to do so.

Every time Saka, Grealish or Sterling attacked in the first half, they did so with 10 times the intent. The ball was moved quicker, defenders were shifted out of position.

It had been there from the second minute, when Sterling raced on to Luke Shaw’s ball and dinked a shot over the onrushing keeper only to see it bounce off the post.

England had made a bright start against the Scots, yet this time it carried through to the interval.

Of course, no England game comes without nervy moments, and quite aside from Kyle Walker’s nonchalant chests back to the goalkeeper and Shaw’s rather selective attitude to blocking crosses, the Czechs always looked dangerous at set pieces.

Thankfully, Jordan Pickford has looked a different keeper so far in this tournament. It is football law when mentioning the Everton man to also acknowledge that he ‘has a mistake in him’ but since growing his hair out to resemble a 1940s RAF pilot he has suddenly become Mr Safe Hands.

There had been no mention whatsoever of Patrik Schick, scorer of three goals in the Euros so far, including that chipped effort against Scotland that has almost certainly secured goal of the tournament before the halfway stage has arrived.

Thankfully, that meant I didn’t feel the need to mine an already-thin seam of puns in an effort to get more likes on Twitter.

The switch of Jordan Henderson for Declan Rice at half time was an interesting one. At time of writing no injury has been reported, so you can only assume it is Southgate trying to get some minutes into the Liverpool skipper with the latter stages in mind.

Things slowed to a snail’s pace in the second half as the substitutions started to punctuate the game. Grealish hardly saw the ball for 20 minutes after the interval and Sako’s only real involvement was body-checking the corner taker after he had been slow to close down a quickly-taken set piece.

Grealish was subbed a good 20 minutes before the end which means either his international career is deemed to exist in the same maverick limbo as Matt le Tissier, and it be claimed that he is not the man for the big matches, or Southgate is just giving him a breather with the second round in mind.

After 40 minutes of what I believe is termed ‘game management’ these days, it was sub Marcus Rashford who punctured the ennui with a nice dart and cut back for Henderson to stab into the net from close range.

Those of us who had been slowly drifting off to the tedious tone of Lee Dixon were briefly woken from our slumber, and then promptly put straight back by the linesman’s flag.

If nothing else, I – and the England team – got an early night. So perhaps we should be thankful for small mercies. It’s work in the morning.