Tuchel 'absolutely convinced' England on right path

Thomas Tuchel says he is "absolutely convinced" that England are on the right path under him, despite them labouring to victory over Andorra on Saturday.

A Christian Garcia own goal and Declan Rice header secured a 2-0 World Cup qualifying win at Villa Park.

It makes it four wins from four competitive games so far under Tuchel, although he did oversee a 3-1 loss at home to Senegal in a friendly.

In those four victories, England have scored eight goals and conceded none - but there's arguably yet to be a particularly eye-catching performance.

"We're getting there," said former Bayern Munich and Chelsea boss Tuchel.

"There's a lot of learning for me. International football is so different to club football.

"I'm absolutely convinced that we are on the right path. We have three camps very close to show that we will create an identity and see who has a connection with who."

This was the second time England had played Andorra since June, with the last match finishing in an unconvincing 1-0 win.

The German was critical of his team after that victory, questioning their attitude.

However, he was much happier with this latest display, despite his team being statistically worse in some key areas.

On Saturday they had fewer shots (11 compared to 20), fewer big chances (4-6) and fewer touches in the opposition box (41-52).

They did score twice in this match, albeit one was an own goal, and Tuchel believes if the second strike had arrived earlier than the 67th minute the win would have been by a much bigger margin.

"I liked the performance," Tuchel told BBC Radio 5 Live. "It was a good performance, a solid performance against a low block.

"The second goal came too late to play with maybe 100% freedom that is needed to score more. We created a lot of chances but didn't convert them.

"We had to wait a long time for the second goal and then we had from the substitutions good energy and then we had the second goal and felt freedom. It was also a signal to the opponent that the game was over.

"In general with the effort and attitude I am totally satisfied and it was a much better performance than in June."

Former England defender Matt Upson, who was covering the game at Villa Park for BBC Radio 5 Live, felt the performance was as good as could be expected given how Andorra set up.

"It is about how we deal with the circumstances and the circumstances are we were playing against a team who don't actually want to make this a game of football," he said.

"When you have that in front of you, it will be uninspiring but that is not down to England's doing. It is just the nature of these matches. They are generally always the same.

"As Tuchel said, if we had scored again 10 minutes after the first one then it ends up 5-0 but instead it was the game it was."

However, Upson accepted that Tuchel has yet to oversee a really impressive England performance.

"I think that's fair," he added. "I think the one game we thought could have been more of a juicy game was Senegal but we made nine changes and half the team was not available to be selected. That is kind of out of Tuchel's control.

"I think it has been hard for him to get together what he needs."