This has been lauded as one of England's greatest games in their history and the result certainly merits that, but it was a result built on doggedness in adversity rather than a glorious victory.

Those who got up or stayed up for what turned out to be a delayed kick off where very glad they did, as they witnessed a win that will be trumpeted as one of the greatest games of football in the countries history.

But it was not an emphatic win in a game we dominated, this was triumph out of adversity, a game where we were outnumbered in a hostile atmosphere and had to battle for everything.

This was a win in the spirit of Dunkirk, Agincourt, Waterloo, & the Battle of Britain, a victory where so much was owed by so many to so few.

The game started with England on the back foot, Mexico had a lot of the ball and early on Jordan Pickford had to produce a magnificent save to keep the scores level.

Throughout the game Mexico enjoyed 67% possession, England just 33% and that was the case before we had a man sent off.

But when we reached 36 minutes suddenly the game burst into life, a lovely counter attack ended up with the ball being crossed to Jude Bellingham's head and we were 1-0 up, the home crowd were shocked.

But before they had a time to regroup , England hit then again with Bellingham again the scorer 90 seconds later.

So with the score at 2-0 and just 7 minutes to half time, we just had to keep it tight, but again our lack of leadership and organisation reared it's ugly head.

With just 3 minutes to the end of the 45, Mexico pulled one back and to be brutal England's defence was all at sea, indeed the Mexican's smelled blood and we were hanging on for the half time whistle.

The second half saw Mexico again driving forward with the bulk of the 80,000 crowd roaring them and the noise increased when Quansah was sent off for a high challenge on Jesus Gallardo barely 10 minutes after the break.

Again it came from a lack of discipline and organisation meaning an opponent was left unmarked out wide and Quansah had to race over and lunge in to win the ball, but his foot was high and it was a nailed on red card as VAR confirmed.

Now it was backs to the wall, but on the hour mark a rare incursion into the Mexican penalty area saw Gordon brought down by the keeper and Harry Kane smashed home the penalty.

You hoped now that we could keep it organised and run down the clock, but the Mexicans piled forward and VAR proved to be our undoing again, this time Harry Kane spotted by it kicking his mans leg as we struggled to clear a corner.

So 3-2 with 20 minutes left and it didn't look good for England, Tomas Tuchel had already made one defensive minded change bringing on John Stones and with 15 mins left he made two more, Dan Burn & Spence coming on.

The message was clear, everyman behind the ball and go on the break, it was not pretty to watch.

Mexico again smelled blood and it took a combination of dogged defending and superb goalkeeping to keep the score level at 90 minutes.

There was a change on 90 mins, some were surprised to see Harry Kane go off, but he had run his socks off, we needed fresh legs up front and Rogers supplied them.

We knew that there would be a lot of injury time, but it is absurd that the 11 minutes announced is a quarter of the actual 45 second half minutes played.

Those 11 minutes dragged, but as it went on you felt like that the Mexicans were starting to wane, but there would be one last flurry.

Sat there shattered both from tiredness and mentally from the game, you wondered/worried whether there would be one last twist, especially as we went past the 11 minutes of injury time and the ref showed no sign of blowing up.

You started to wonder whether this really was a World Cup that was fixed, FIFA did not want to see a second host nation go out, with a good chance of the USA joining them 24 hours later.

Conspiracy theories raced through the brain and you do have to ask how after finding so much extra time, he squeezed out almost another 25% of injury time on top of it.

But we might have lacked a leader at the back and organisation, but we didn't lack spirit and guts, we dug in, bodies were thrown in front of the ball and when they weren't there was Jordan Pickford.

I have often been a critic of the Everton keeper, but this was definitely his best game in an England shirt and possibly in any shirt, his timing was spot on, he stopped shots and he came for crosses and made every one.

The stats did not lie, Mexico 67% possession, 25 attempts on goal compared to England's 6, but what was the foundation is we had the same number on target - 5.

Looking back though, Mexico spent too much time passing the ball around just outside our penalty area and not enough putting the ball into our box when they genuinely looked dangerous when they did.

They only had 37 touches in our box, that seems low given their domination in our final third, we had 14 in theirs.

All the stats suggested that they should have won this game especially as we were down to 10 men for most of the second half.

But perhaps that helped us and not them, we defended on the edge of our own box and didn't have the man power to commit ourselves forward too often.

We didn't let them get in behind us too often, we restricted them to crosses into the box and although we struggled for an hour to deal with them, after that we were in the main tight.

They had 52 crosses, we had just 4, but scored from 2 of them.

So this was not a glorious victory, it was one born of adversity, a team on the back foot for most of the game, we lacked leadership and organisation at the back, but we didn't lack fight and guts.

With the Mexicans in our face throughout the game, demanding free kicks, demanding yellow &red cards and generally intimidating the ref, we stayed strong.

This was an England win in the English way, blood & guts.

There were plenty of contenders for man of the match, Jordan Pickford was certainly one, Declan Rice another, especially since he had been yellow carded in the very first minute.

Jude Bellingham showed his class, not just in his finishing, but in his ability to carry the ball to try and relive pressure.

Overall this was a team performance, every man put in his shift and made sure that if they didn't have brilliant games in the fact that we struggled for long periods, that we didn't cave in.

So now it is Norway, the talk is that they are a one man team, that even Erling Haaland would not get in the England side, but that is no guarantee of victory.

History tells us that England performances are full of victories like this, when sides sit back we tend to struggle a little, we have to make sure that we don't get too carried away and believe our own hype.

Each game seems to bring a different injury, a different issue, we have plenty of flair, but we are going to have to outscore the opposition,

I could easily have been talking about an abject defeat this morning.

But I'm not so lets finish on a positive, we have the spirit to win this tournament, the footballing Gods seem to put something to try us both on and off the pitch, perhaps this is what will spur England on, I hope so.

All Photos Via Reuters