First published in The Pink on Saturday, October 16, 2010

THE international break may not stretch as far as League One, but the Euro 2012 qualifiers still took centre stage last weekend.

You may not think multimillionaire footballers in the glittering stadia of north London and south Dublin has much to do with Saints, but bear with me.

There may not be the appetite around England for the international form of the game these days, yet watching how the games unfolded does raise some interesting posers.

Firstly, how England laboured against a Montenegro side that is better than its FIFA ranking suggests.

The Balkan side played a solid and structured game, and it was clear to see why they have yet to concede a goal in this campaign.

I didn’t watch much of the England match – I was too busy with my own nation – but from what I did see the English just seemed to have run out of ideas.

In contrast, Russia and Spain looked to have a plethora of them against Ireland and Scotland.

As much as I hate to admit it, Ireland are no world beaters, but under Trapattoni (pictured below) they are very hard to beat. Usually. The Russians were three up inside an hour and were quite frankly carving us open at will at times.

The disciplined and pragmatic football that Trap has us playing was no match for the quick, fluid game Hiddink had his charges playing.

It was only a return to long balls in the last 20 minutes that saw Ireland salvage some pride in the form of a goals from Robbie Keane and Shane Long.

Now, this may seem like it has very, very little to do with Saints but there is a theme here – how to break down hard-to-beat sides.

The key to it all being creativity.

Long balls up to Lambert, who is often quite isolated, are only going to get us so far. But with the return of Lallana, the emergence of Guly as a creative force and with Puncheon finding his feet, Saints have the ability to create something from nothing.

Against Tranmere, Saints did play some very nice stuff.

Hopefully, Adkins can build on that and remind the players how they can tear even the most disciplined and defensive sides apart in this division.

Quite simply, if we want to go up, we need to be more Russian than English.