England's almost guaranteed of qualification after win and Switzerland's defeat

GROUP E

ENGLAND 5

(Phil Jagielka 25, Wayne Rooney 43-pen, Danny Welbeck 49, Andros Townsend 72, Alessandro Della Valle 78-og)

SAN MARINO 0

England won and they are all but through to France 2016. That is all that can be said for it.

Three more points for a qualifying campaign that is effectively already over.

Switzerland's 1-0 defeat by Slovenia means that there is now no serious challenge for the top spot, and certainly little risk of England dropping to third.

As a hurdle, it was low and it was vaulted easily. As a game, it was a non-event. 

For 24 minutes, San Marino held England at bay, dutifully shuffling in front of their hosts, congesting the space, reducing the chances and slowing down the play.

The deadlock was broken only when goalkeeper Aldo Simoncini hared off his line, tripped over a teammate's ankle and fell over, allowing Phil Jagielka to head home.

Still, England struggled to make inroads into the thick blue mass of amateur footballers.

A penalty two minutes before half-time allowed Wayne Rooney to inch closer to the all-time scorer's record, but it was turgid stuff. 

"I'm pleased," said Roy Hodgson after the match. "I'm pleased we won, I'm pleased we got the job done, I'm pleased with the crowd - they were terrific throughout."

While it would be churlish to deny Hodgson the pleasure of a job professionally done, the praise for the supporters seemed odd.

For much of the game, Wembley was filled with the soft rumble of background conversation, broken only by the occasional ripple of applause whenever San Marino completed a pass.

There have been many incredible nights at this stadium since it opened in 2007, but this was certainly not one of them. 

In the second half, Hodgson made changes, removing Jordan Henderson and Raheem Sterling, though he was at pains to point out that he hadn't done it because of Brendan Rodgers' complaints.

Either way, it seemed to work. The width provided by Andros Townsend and the increased room to Jack Wilshere allowed England to stretch the minnows, though even Hodgson accepted that this may have been because the part-timers were tiring. 

Nevertheless, there were tangible positives to be taken from the game, even when the weakness of the opposition is accounted for.

DESIRE

Hodgson was pleased to see his players continue to make "recovery runs" even in the final moments, evidence of a desire that has not always been there. 

Danny Welbeck scored a third shortly after the break, Townsend hit a typical long-range effort after cutting in from the flank and Rooney added a fifth although it was marked down as an Alessandro Della Valle own-goal.

All the strikes were met by gleeful cheers that quickly faded back into background conversation.

When a manager takes positives from a 5-0 defeat, you know it's been a strange night, but Pierangelo Manzaroli is clearly a glass half-full kind of guy. 

"It's an experience first of all," he said. "It's the pleasure of playing in such a great stadium in front of fantastic fans against a big team, to which I wish all the best.

"As for the result, against teams of this stature, sometimes it's worse, so we can take that away from tonight."

He even managed to get a dig in at England.

"I have no regrets," he said. "We believe we could lead the match to the path we were taking it down.

"Yes, England could have scored more in the second half, maybe we were a bit lucky. But, in the first half, I think maybe they over-achieved a bit.

Manzaroli did cause some confusion when he said that he didn't see himself staying as the San Marino manager for much longer.

"The stress levels are very high," he said.

Given that everyone expects this tiny nation to lose every game heavily, it's hard to see where the stress is coming from. 

Mind you, with the look of the group table and the standard of the opposition, you might say the same for Hodgson. 

"I'd be a bit wary of putting Estonia in the same category as San Marino. They might surprise people who haven't seen a lot of them. They're very Scandinavian in their approach, and you know how good the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes have been in terms of work ethic and organisation. It will be a bit of a test, but I'm very confident we'll see it through."

- Hodgson, on facing their next opponents Estonia