THERE ARE two ways of looking at England’s victory over Kazakhstan at Wembley. The straightforward view is that the superior team took their time to sap the energy of enthusiastic but underpowered rival but, once that happened, everything that followed was inevitable.

It wasn’t a great England performance, or a bad one, but one in which the team’s relentlessness was always going to earn its reward.

The alternative view is that when a young Kazakhstan side had the energy to match England’s physical advantages, all the old weaknesses were on show and the tough questions weren’t satisfactorily answered. Can Emile Heskey ever score enough to justify his position as the attacking spearhead? Can England succeed with anything other than a standard four-four-two?

After 50 minutes, the score was 0-0 and the best chance of the match had fallen to Kazakhstan’s Tanat Nuserbayev. But the central question remains the dilemma that faces Fabio Capello as he decides what to do with his midfield and whether to continue to marry Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in the centre.

They are the two most influential midfielders in the Premier League and there is no obvious reason they should not form a complementary duo. They can both run and tackle, they have good engines and they both pass the ball well. Yet at Wembley it wasn’t there. That chemistry, that sense of knowing where the other one was, that desire to link and do things together, none of it was there.

Some of what was missing can be explained by Capello’s 4-3-3 formation, which meant Gerrard being stationed on the right of centre midfield, Lampard towards the left. Often, they were just too far away from each other to achieve anything together.

It is a particular shame that Lampard cannot be the influence for England that he is so routinely for Chelsea. In the blue of his clubmates, he weaves everything together, takes the ball, gives it and is always available for the return pass: a joy to play with and a nightmare to play against because he becomes a second or third striker when Chelsea attack.

Goodness knows he tried yesterday and perhaps, if two early shots had not been blocked, he might have had the goal that would have inspired a better first-half performance from his team. In the end, Lampard’s most telling contributions came from the corner and free kick that led to England’s first and second goals. He didn’t play badly but he wasn’t half the player he is every other weekend of the season.

Gerrard’s performance wasn’t bad either but it wasn’t what he would have wanted and it will disappoint both him and Lampard that they didn’t advance the case for playing them together in the centre of midfield.

Plenty of managers before Capello have played Gerrard in positions other than central midfield and there was a moment early in the second half when you wondered whether he has the tactical discipline required of the position. England had given the ball away cheaply, Kazakhstan counter-attacked quickly down the right wing, Gerrard was in a position to cover for the absent Ashley Cole but somehow lost his bearings and his man. From the subsequent cross, Nuserbayev had that chance to score but he blazed it over the bar.

In assessing why it didn’t work, the replacement of Gareth Barry with Shaun Wright-Phillips and the reversion to a 4-4-2 formation has some significance. England and their midfield players were more comfortable with the greater width and the goals that followed made all the questions less relevant.

When the team delivers a performance, as England did so spectacularly in Zagreb last month, there is an exaggerated euphoria and its inevitable companion, unreal expectation.

On every road leading to Wembley yesterday, the touts lined up, each one desperate to buy – and not one with a ticket to sell.

But the fervour of England’s fans is both a blessing and a burden and for 50 minutes the players felt only the burden. Goals change everything and when they started raining down the drums played, the fans chanted and the first-half display was forgotten.

Croatia offered us notions of how good England are. Yesterday evening there was a different, less generous assessment. The truth lies somewhere in between.

As for Lampard and Gerrard, we shall, as ever, have to be patient.