Nick Cain gives his post-autumn verdict on where England are with just eight games to go until RWC2015

When Stuart Lancaster was asked about the one added extra he would have wanted in his England team for the autumn series his response was “Manu”, as in Tuilagi. There is no question that a fit-again Tuilagi would would have given England a handy midfield broadsword in the disappointing losses to New Zealand and South Africa. It is also true that he could be a significant bonus if he returns ahead of the next Red Rose assignment against Wales on the first Friday in February – but the response did little to clarify the muddle at 12 and 13 that the head coach has presided over since the last Six Nations campaign.
This muddle extends back to the summer series in New Zealand when Tuilagi, far from being viewed as England's most prized midfield asset, was shunted out to the right wing for the crucial second Test in Dunedin.
It was a strange call by Lancaster, and since then it has been compounded by other questionable selection decisions along the 10-12-13 axis.
George Ford acquitting himself so well against Samoa and Australia, after being left on the sidelines for a half-fit and out of form Owen Farrell for the opening autumn clashes against NZ and SA, has had plenty of airing –  but it happened ten months after I advocated in these pages that he should be picked against Scotland.
That suggestion was made in the belief that, at almost two years out from the 2015 World Cup, last season was the prime time for Lancaster to experiment and see what else was brewing at fly-half. When England lost their opening game to France – and with it any chance of a Grand Slam – the argument for taking a look at Ford against an out-of-sorts Scotland side was compelling, yet Lancaster did not take the opportunity to look at his depth at 10 in the event of injury to Farrell.
Instead, the Bath fly-half's introduction came in the last knockings of the last two games against Wales and Italy. By that time the head coach's hand had already been forced at centre with injuries to Brad Barritt and Tuilagi leading to a new Six Nations centre combination of Billy Twelvetrees and Luther Burrell. That pairing dovetailed remarkably well, emerging as a promising new force by the end of the tournament.
However, with Twelvetrees and Burrell finding the going tough on the summer tour of New Zealand as England tried to match the All Blacks at all-singing-and-dancing 15 man rugby, it was change again at the start of the autumn. With both centres returning with their confidence dented Lancaster opted for Kyle Eastmond at 12 – despite his third Test tribulations in NZ – with backs coach Andy Farrell's defensive ‘go-to' man, Brad Barritt, who rarely plays at 13 for Saracens, employed outside him.
Barritt's inclusion at outside-centre was hard to fathom given that the form 13 in the Premiership this season has been Eastmond's Bath teammate, Jonathan Joseph. The decision to overlook a player like Joseph, who offers a different threat to Tuilagi, relying on footwork and searing pace more than massive power, was looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The word is that the England coaches passed over Joseph because of concerns over his defence, opting instead for the rock-solid tackling of Barritt – even if it was employed one-out from his customary berth at inside-centre.
However, if Barritt's defensive capabilities were so important to England this autumn then surely it would have made more sense to pick him at 12 and thereby take the option of having a look at a radical alternative to Tuilagi?
Given that Tuilagi plays such a physically confrontational game it was probably only a matter of time before he had a run of injury which pressed the England coaches into looking at alternatives. In the event, he has been ruled out for the last two autumn series, and all but the last game of the 2014 Six Nations.
The thought of a 13 with Joseph's wheels combining with wings with the speed of Jonny May, Semesa Rokoduguni or Anthony Watson would certainly have whetted the appetite of England fans eager to see a new attacking edge to their side.
Yet, the only options that Lancaster has explored at 13 are Burrell, and now Barritt – both of whom play inside-centre for their clubs, and, while direct and hard-running, do not have the speed of most international outside-centres.
The selection at 12 is now similarly confused, with Eastmond, Owen Farrell and, as a last port of call, Twelvetrees, employed in the position this autumn. Lancaster has said that because he wants to be able to attack either side of the breakdown, he wants his inside centre to be a second distributor and tactical kicker. Hence the experiment with Farrell alongside Ford against Samoa, and Twelvetrees taking the same role against the Wallabies.
Again, it could be argued that the best long-term option, and the one that would have rewarded form this season, would have been to draft Exeter's versatile 2013 Junior World Cup winning young gun, Henry Slade, into the autumn action. Slade appears to have the full armoury. He is a left foot kicker, whereas Ford and Farrell are right footed, he is an accomplished goal-kicker and distributor, he tackles strongly, and he has enough speed to be elusive at either 10, 12 or 13.
Perhaps Slade is one of those exceptional backs, who, like Jonny Wilkinson, can cut it at the highest level for a decade or more. However, unlike Wilkinson he was not capped at 18, and unless he gets a run early in the Six Nations, will have to wait until he is 22 to get his chance.
It is no bad thing that Slade's progress at Exeter has been measured, but what is harder to accept is that the head coach has been through nine different centre pairings in his three years in charge – and that three of them came in this series.

The multiple-choice options facing Lancaster and his coaching crew have not become easier with Sam Burgess arriving on the scene.  Burgess looked a little lost in the Montpellier rain when he came on as a second half replacement in Bath's convincing win on Friday night, but it is still very early in the script.  However, if the Rugby League colossus has the ability to bring offloading as well as power to the party in double quick time – and it's a big but tantalising ‘if' – then an England centre pairing at the 2015 World Cup of Burgess at 12 and Tuilagi at 13 would need a Centurion tank to stop it.
These are issues that call for some clarity, and they would have been raised with the England head coach if, like the coaches of most other leading countries, he had been available for an immediate autumn wash-up press conference. Yet, the RFU decided to keep their main man out of the firing line after an inauspicious autumn campaign, restricting his appearance to immediate post-match duties after the Australia game.
What has been lacking so far has been conviction on the part of the head coach, and his backs coach, Andy Farrell, when it comes to midfield selection. The most important part of Lancaster's job is to identify which parts of a complex jigsaw puzzle fit together, with Farrell also feeding-in his insight, and then to back his judgement.  Before the Australia match Farrell said that the main issues were for England to get all their best midfield players on the pitch, and that they had started from scratch under Lancaster. He added that the midfield selection shifts were part of a young team coming together. What Farrell did not say was that the player Lancaster considers as his main midfield stanchion, Tuilagi, was in place well before they took over.
The lack of joined-up thinking has extended outside the midfield. Take Semesa Rokoduguni. One minute the tank soldier was England's flavour of the month, the next, having suffered an injury which did not keep him out of the Bath line-up for long, he was told to rejoin his club. Yet, he did well in defence against New Zealand, while having very few chances to show his attacking repertoire.
For some national coaches the job is simpler than it is for others, dictated by the number of elite players at their disposal. Due to enviable strength-in-depth England coaches frequently have the conundrum of having to sift through more options than their opponents – but they also have the benefit, should they get it right, of creating a picture that is more complete and vivid.
Joe Schmidt showed how to sift the options expertly with his conversion of two full-backs, Robbie Henshaw and Jared Payne, into Ireland's centre pairing. The selection showed strategic nous, because high ball kick-chase was one of the main weapons in Ireland's strong autumn showing.
An inability to make the most of its talent pool has occured far too infrequently in England's rugby history, with the flaws of the recent past mirrored throughout the ages. Red rose coaches are often bamboozled by the choices facing them. It takes imagination, conviction and hard-earned coaching experience to put the right parts together at the right time, and to at least give yourself the chance of producing a team with World Cup-winning chemistry.
So far, England's coaches are not close to getting full marks when it comes to solving their backline puzzles, and that is why Ian Ritchie was right to describe this autumn as “disappointing”. However, the RFU chief executive kept it vague, and did not finger Lancaster or his coaches.
Wales will not be as diplomatic. There were signs in the Welsh win over South Africa, and in the defeats by Australia and New Zealand, that their virtually all-Lions test backline of Leigh Halfpenny, Jamie Roberts, Jonathan Davies, George North and Alex Cuthbert remains the most potent force in the Northern Hemisphere. In addition, Dan Biggar has emerged over the last six months as the No.10 general the Welsh have been waiting for, while Rhys Webb is a handful of a scrum-half.
It is writ large already that England will need a clear, coherent midfield strategy before they visit Cardiff again, because they have seen the damage the Welsh strike force can inflict first-hand. Two years ago it left their Grand Slam dream smashed to smithereens, and a quick glance at the team-list will tell you that Manu was in the starting line-up.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on December 7.