England skipper Gary Cahill missed the 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Lithuania at Wembley tonight due to suspension.
His inspirational, albeit quiet command of the team was sorely missed as England struggled at times against a heavily defensive opposition.
In his enforced absence, Joe Hart took the captain's armband and almost made a hash of it with a terrible mistimed jump for the ball on the stroke of half-time.
Thankfully for him John Stones was on hand to clear Nerijus Valskis weak lob off the line.
The first half was punctuated only by the neat strike by Jermaine Defoe to put the Three Lions into the lead.
But this was a sluggish as best performance from Gareth Southgate's men.
The second half saw Hart produce an early save, while Arsenal's Alex Oxade-Chamberlain's venomous right-footed drive saw Lithuania's goalkeeper Emesta Setkus dive acrobatically to his left to thwart the underperforming midfielder.
Former Chelsea left back Ryan Bertrand, who never really got the minutes on the Stamford Bridge pitch his talents deserved, was impressive going forward.
In order to inject some pace into the home side, Southgate introduced Jamie Vardy for Defoe and Marcus Rashford for Raheem Sterling on 60 minutes.
It took Vardy just five minutes to notch up the second goal. A neat interchange between Kyle Walker and Adam Lallana saw the Leicester hit-man nip in behind the visitors' defence and slip the ball cooly home from close range.
Vardy had a great chance to get his second but hacked a left-footer over the crossbar having bisected the Lithuania defence with great aplomb.
This was quickly followed by a bulletin header by Eric Dier which zipped past the post with nine minutes left on the clock.
The win keeps England at the top of Group F with 13 points.