IF international football was the Premier League, England would be Everton. Half-decent a fair while ago, and boasting a smattering of exciting young players, but a long way short of the very highest level and unlikely to be challenging for a meaningful title any time soon.

To stretch the analogy further, Slovenia would probably be Swansea City. So would we really expect Everton to stroll to victory at the Liberty Stadium and berate them if they were forced to settle for a goalless draw?

Four months on from England’s ignominious exit from the European Championships, and so many of us already appear to have reverted to type. ‘They’re hopeless’ was the cry after Roy Hodgson’s side were humiliated by Iceland, reflecting an acceptance that England had tumbled down the international pecking order and were no longer on a par with the leading sides in Europe and beyond.

Yet here we are three games later, demanding that England’s players waltz through World Cup qualifying racking up ten straight victories, ideally playing breathtaking attacking football in the process.

Well, guess what? It’s not going to happen. Why? Because England are an average team with a lot of average players. And average teams tend to play averagely a lot of the time. Every now and then, they’ll perform above themselves and maybe beat a side ranked a fair way above them; every now and then, they’ll underperform and stumble to a drab draw or disappointing defeat. But in the majority of their games, they’ll simply be average. No more, no less.

That should be the starting point for assessing England’s performances and results, but it isn’t because for all the failures, all the embarrassments at World Cups and European Championships, there’s still a sense that the national side are somehow at a level that entitles them to wipe the floor with the opposition.

Never mind that no England team has consistently done that for years, especially in a major tournament setting. ‘We’re England and we should be putting four or five past Slovenia’. Nonsense.

‘Ah, but these players are playing for some of the biggest teams in the best league in the world’, some will no doubt cry. ‘And they’re on £100,000-a-week’.

Well let’s nip this ‘best league in the world’ rubbish in the bud now. The Premier League is the most hyped league in the world, largely thanks to the formidable PR machine assembled by Sky Sports, and it’s possible to construct an argument that it’s also the most exciting.

But the best? You only have to look at the results from the latter stages of the Champions League and Europa League in the last few years to see where the Premier League really stands in the continental pecking order, and even if the English top-flight was a world leader in terms of talent and technique, that wouldn’t really help the national team when there’s hardly any English players playing in it.

We assume the likes of Daniel Sturridge and Theo Walcott are world-beaters because they’re playing for Liverpool and Arsenal, but neither of those clubs has been at the pinnacle of the European game for quite a while now and Sturridge has started three Premier League games without scoring this season while Walcott was regarded as an Arsenal reserve before sparking into form in the last month.

Joe Hart? Performed superbly on Tuesday night, but wasn’t deemed good enough for a place in Manchester City’s squad this season. Gary Cahill? I think we’ve seen enough of him with England and Chelsea over the last few years to be aware of his limitations. Jesse Lingard? A promising youngster, but could you imagine him getting a game for Bayern Munich or Real Madrid?

This is an England squad completely bereft of truly world-class quality, yet the demands for world-class achievement does not disappear. Hence the clamour for a ‘world-class manager’ rather than an acceptance that someone like Gareth Southgate might be capable of engineering a gradual improvement if he is given a chance to work with this group of players over a number of years.

‘Yeah, but it was only Slovenia’, is another line of attack. Fair enough, Slovenia are 55 places below England in FIFA’s world rankings and failed to qualify for this summer’s European Championships, having lost to Ukraine in the play-offs.

But to dismiss them as no-hopers is just another example of English arrogance. Their goalkeeper, Jan Oblak, plays for Atletico Madrid. One of their leading forwards, Josip Ilicic, is with Fiorentina, while they have other players who play their club football with Villarreal, Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen. Three days before drawing with England, they beat Slovakia, something Hodgson’s side conspicuously failed to do at the Euros.

England might have carried a 100 per cent record through the qualifying campaign for Euro 2016, but that is the exception rather than the rule for anyone.

The cliché that there are ‘no easy games in international football’ doesn’t quite ring true, particularly less than a week after England brushed aside Malta, but it’s still unrealistic to expect a team like England to routinely beat mid-ranking continental opponents, especially away from home.

Wales, who were supposedly so superior to England at Euro 2016, couldn’t beat Georgia in Cardiff at the weekend. The current round of qualifiers is just three games old, but there are just four European sides – Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Greece – who boast a 100 per cent record. England are one of 21 teams who remain unbeaten.

That won’t be enough for some, but in the wake of yet another tournament embarrassment, it is surely time to scale back expectations to a more realistic level. That doesn’t mean routinely excusing failure, but it should mean a more nuanced analysis of England’s performances and a less knee-jerk response when things don’t quite go as planned.