With James I could understand it a little last night as Robertson and Tierney on their left will cause anyone problems if they play well.
Outside of Kane not performing our biggest issue right now, for me, is Rice/Phillips. Against sides we should be beating they should never play together. And Rice needs to move the ball much more quickly and positively, as he regularly does for West Ham. But together they slow things down for us far too much, and it sets the tempo for the whole game. We are crying out for Jude Bellingham.
IMO the biggest issue is how we are using the FB's. I'll leave the debate about individual aside as it's not that important for now but BOTH FB's were very, very deep yesterday.
This has a profound effect on how we manufacture our attacks. The biggest disappointment was Scotland played with a back 3. The easiest way to beat a back three is to go around them down the sides as back three's play narrow and ultimately control the spaces between the width of the box. We didn't do that at all (we attempted 3 crosses from our FB's all night, Robertson created 11 on his own!).
To play deep is clearly an instruction as it was exactly the same when Tripps and Walker played in the previous game. Also, in both games now it's clear we are not looking to use them to progress the ball and link play in the oppo half, they barely touch the ball in the oppo half.
It means we aren't stretching the oppo, it doesn't matter if we invert the FB's or have them stay wide to create width, if they play inverted then it's the wide AM that should be overlapping or just staying wide to stretch the pitch.
The knock-on is oppo always defend with a numerical advantage, a back three isn't put under duress about having to make a decision of remaining narrow or being forced out wide and out of shape to stop a cross etc. Basically, they are set, in shape.
Without them involved in the build-up, even used as a wall pass from Midfielder with a one-two there nothing to cause problems for the oppo defence, this massively reduces the space that Kane has, in fact, it means Kane has none at all to work with, as the CB's can remain in shape and narrow, even if he looks for space across the line, they can just pass him off between them.
On the very rare occasion Shaw went forward we created spaces in their defence.
It doesn't matter who the personnel is be that the FB's, midfield (Mount, Sterling, Foden, Grealish or Kane, Sancho, Rashford) the problem will still be there is he don't push our FB's up.