Spain 4-0 England: The world champions exposed the shortcomings of the Lions

With a year to go before the World Cup kicks off in Brazil, it was a worrying scoreline that gave Wigman plenty to ponder.

Facing world champions Spain away from home is arguably the toughest challenge in football, but losing comfortably was not an easy sight.

Former England midfielder Fran Kirby said Wigman’s players looked “stunned” throughout and “it hurt just to see her”.

“They’ll learn from it, and they’ll have to go on to do well against Ukraine,” Kirby told BBC Radio 5 Live.

The top team in their group will go straight through to the World Cup and could miss out even if England beat Ukraine on Tuesday, with defeat to Spain the only blemish on an otherwise strong season.

So what damage did the 4-0 defeat do to England?

“Obviously, this is not a good result line. It is difficult, it is disappointing, and I think there was a big difference between us and Spain,” Wiegmann added.

“We will evaluate this, recover, stick together, play a good game and move forward.

If we qualify (automatically) we know there is a different arrangement than if we don’t qualify. First, let’s see what happens on Tuesday.

England midfielder Keira Walsh, who captained the side without injured centre-back Leah Williamson, said they were “not good enough”.

“Spain played incredibly well but I think there are a lot of things we can do better,” Walsh said.

“It was very difficult to get out of our own box, I don’t have solutions now. Obviously we look back but now the emotions are very high.

“The game was disappointing. We still had a small chance of automatic qualification. It was out of our hands. Hopefully it will help Iceland.”