2nd division

I'll set it out early; I'm not a fan of guscott as a pundit. He makes too many mistakes and general seems overly keen to dismiss england. I'm sure loads will love him however. His latest comments have me scratching my head again. England's attack is second division.

I believe he's focusing on slicing teams to pieces on first phase balls from the set piece but even then I've seen enough go very right from lineouts and scrums to suggest he's looking for something to moan about. Our counter attacking from turnovers in particular looks top notch. I'm all for improvements to this team but surely 2nd division is a bit of an exaggeration?

Autumn internationals: Jeremy Guscott on Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/42131633

He talks pish.

He's a contrarian who is too often inaccurate with his facts to be given any real credibility for his opinions.

He has to say something to justify his Beeb Wage.

Makes Inverdale look professional.

He's a weekender observer. He's too cool to really study the sport in detail anymore.... instead he just does the lazy thing and settles for a general overview of a game on strictly one sitting. Kinda like me!

Prince of centres but not of pundits. It's a bit like saying that if you ignore the last 10 minutes against Australia we were rubbish in that game.

It doesn't matter. Much more important we concentrate on the long term game which is the RWC rather than best ever performance in the AI's. And we keep on clocking up wins.

We had one serious game against Australia which ended with a solid victory. One poor stodgy rusty game against Argentina (which also turned into a solid win by a bigger margin than Ireland - Arg) and an easy if occasionally embarrassing game vs Samoa.

All of these games have added depth and told us about some new players and I think only really the Oz team was close to what our best current selection could be.

For the record Guscott's choices were 5 scots 5 Irish 3 English and 2 Irish. No idea why Dan Cole got in at TH- unless everybody else's choices are that bad. (He's a good player but not really exceptional and he's not getting the sneaky turnovers that used to add a lot to his value). I have not seen the Irish games and know Stander can be a superb player but didn't think his current writeups have been that great either.

For England I guess its a reflection that we are (mostly) playing to a decent standard as a team rather than having many really standout individual performances, and a reflection that the only opposition that was a threat was Australia.

Much as I hate to admit it, he's got half a point. England scored quite a lot of tries, but didn't create many of them through scintillating back play.

There are a number of reasons why not - the conditions for Argentina were dire, it was a fairly experimental backline, and I wonder if Eddie is actually working on England being comfortable playing without the ball (I don't think they dominated possession or territory in any of the games). But I think it's factually correct that England didn't create much from conventional back play.

I'm not too worried by that- it speaks to me of developing a wider range of ways to score, and I think the pool of backline players has enough talent that it will start to play fluently once the different combinations have had more time together.