England’s defence, France being good, Georgia

We’ve got a few things right about these Euros.

Germany have, alas, been as good as we feared they might. Switzerland are doing a bang-up job as our Dark Horses, cleverly conceding a late equaliser against said Germans to keep themselves both that crucial distance below the radar while also sliding sneakily into the easier half of the draw – although don’t let Ollie Holt hear you say it.

But we’re big enough and ugly enough to admit we had plenty of assumptions about this event that, after 36 of the 51 games have eliminated precisely eight of the 24 teams, are not yet coming to pass.

Here are five of the buggers.

1. England’s problem was the defence

No fears about England going forward, were there? Hmm? World-class talent everywhere you look up there. Top-scorer from the Bundesliga! Player of the year from the Barclays! Jude Bellingham! Starboy!

And don’t even get us started on that bench depth. Yes, that was all going to be fine. The goals would flow.

But that defence? Nightmare. Every one of them untested, out of form, out of favour or some combination of the above.

And yet, three games in, England have scored precisely two goals while being entirely untroubled at the back.

Marc Guehi has emerged as one of the group stage’s standout players, in accordance with the prophecy, and he and John Stones look like they’ve been doing this for years. Jordan Pickford has barely made a save, and the one goal England have conceded was a 25-yarder that went in off the inside of the post.

Now there is a fairly compelling counter-argument here that England’s problem still has been the defence, but that it’s manifesting further forward. That England are so worried about their perceived defensive frailty that they’ve sacrificed attacking endeavour to paper over those cracks.

There’s logic to it. But if you could go back in time three weeks and tell yourself we’d be talking seriously about whether we need to drop Bellingham and that Guehi was our best player you’d believe your future self to have somehow got horribly muddled up by the whole time-travel caper, which to be fair must be a bit of a head-f*** when you think about it.

Even using this ungodly power to talk to your past self about the impressive Euro 2024 efforts of a Crystal Palace centre-back point to a brain unravelling.

2. France would be brilliant

Got the lot, haven’t they? Brilliant starting XI, brilliant second XI, legit bona fide global superstar in Kylian Mbappe. These boys are going to take some stopping, we thought.

Turns out at this point they take very little stopping. Even Poland, the easiest European team to play at a major tournament apart from Scotland, managed it.

Their only goals so far have been an own goal and a penalty. They have, and we don’t say this lightly, been every bit as shonky as England. They look tidy enough at the back, sure, but going forward it’s a ponderous, sludgy mess determinedly extracting far, far less than the sum of its parts.

Didier Deschamps is just Gareth Southgate but with a Kylian Mbappe. They may well still win it, but it will be despite themselves and despite the manager, and we’ll leave it up to you to decide whether we’re talking about France or England there.