England: Marcus Rashford and Phil Foden face pivotal night in bid to stay in Thomas Tuchel's plans | OneFootball

With Anthony Gordon, Bukayo Saka and Cole Palmer to come back in, Tuchel does not need to persist with forwards who are not performing

A week in and already it is clear that time moves just that little bit faster in this condensed, Thomas Tuchel England-verse.

Of the 60 training days before next year’s World Cup that Tuchel talked of when addressing his first squad at St. George’s Park last Monday, a tenth have already been used. Of the six camps and sets of fixtures the German will have to mould his team, Monday’s meeting with Latvia is all that remains of the first.

And so, already, it feels a pivotal evening for Marcus Rashford and Phil Foden.

“We hope for more impact in these positions,” Tuchel said immediately after the 2-0 win. “More dribbling and more aggressive runs towards the box. In general that was missing.”

Rashford failed to make an impact after being handed a start against Albania

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By Sunday, having analysed the game, he was a little more forgiving, citing both players’s work off the ball and insisting he “appreciated the effort”.

Given the field of candidates for those spots comprises some of the Premier League’s most exciting forwards, though, that is almost damning with faint praise.

Work-ethic will not be enough to keep Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon out of the team for long - it is not as if any of them could be accused of slacking on that score either.

With Gordon injured in a late cameo against the Albanians, and Saka and Palmer already missing from this squad, at least one of Rashford and Foden appears certain to start again on Monday.

Rashford’s recall, and certainly his involvement from the outset against Albania, felt premature but the opportunity before him now is significant.

England are not as blessed with options on the left flank as they are on the right and Tuchel’s messaging so far has suggested he will not fall into the square-pegs trap that lured Gareth Southgate last summer.

That the 27-year-old was preferred to Gordon in Friday’s first XI of the era, despite his encouraging loan spell at Aston Villa being yet to yield a goal, suggests his peak ability is well regarded by the new regime. Whether these promising early signs at Villa will blossom into its full rediscovery remains to be seen.

Foden’s case is a little more complex. There is no doubting the 24-year-old is among the best five, never mind 11, footballers in the country and was quite literally voted the best across its top division less than a year ago. Translating that talent to international football, though, is in danger of becoming no longer a one-man, Southgate problem.

Foden struggled on the right of the attack against Albania

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Foden still has just four goals in 44 England caps, half of which came in a single game against Iceland four-and-a-half years ago. Since the end of the last World Cup in Qatar, a period which had, until this season, seen his club form peak, it is one goal in 22 games.

With retrospective grumblings about his deployment off the left flank at last summer’s Euros, Foden has effectively talked himself out of that position and now, as Roy Keane succinctly put it during ITV’s coverage on Friday night, is at serious risk of playing himself out of the team altogether.

The No10 spot is Jude Bellingham’s. Saka and Palmer will both contest the right, with the former looking tailor-made for Tuchel’s demand for a winger who hugs the touchline and takes on his man.

Unlocking the best of Foden felt almost an unfulfilled personal project for Southgate, who had played such a prominent role in transforming English football’s youth production and was then handed its rarest talent, a pre-ordained international star. How could his England possibly succeed without making best use of the player of his generation?

Things are different now, though, the pool deeper and Tuchel, with his single-minded brief, bearing no loyalties or preconceptions about who ought or ought not to be in his team. That, as he warned on Sunday, may mean some big names miss out in England’s most crowded area of the pitch.

“It’s just not possible we play all these No10 positions,” Tuchel said. “In the end we need to understand and get the balance right.

“Is this then in a 3-2 [in midfield] and we have two No6s and three No10s? But then the real wingers - like Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, key players - would suffer because the position would not be there.

“Do we accept that we have less control and we have two wide wingers? Then some No10s simply cannot play.”