Roy Hodgson has no intention of ripping up his World Cup blueprint even though his England team has work to do in the bid to reach Brazil.
The draw in Poland on Wednesday might have allowed England to keep their place at the head of Group H.
However, by the time November's internationals are over, the Three Lions will have been shoved into second spot, with Montenegro almost certain to sweep aside San Marino while England play Sweden in a friendly.
In a group that is going to be determined by results between the four most noteworthy teams, Montenegro's win in Ukraine on Tuesday has laid down a marker to which England, with two points from their two tough games - the same number as Poland - must respond.
To that end, England's performance in Warsaw was disappointing.
Passes going astray, tackles missed, chances squandered. In the end, they were thankful to fly home with a point.
It was not good. Hodgson accepted it.
But England's experienced coach views it very much as a one-off.
"We know there is work to be done," he said.
"I'm not prepared now, because we didn't do quite so well against Poland, to suddenly start saying 'we need radical improvements'.
"We need to keep working on our game and make sure we don't lose some of these quite important qualities which saw us get out of the group in the Euros without playing brilliantly well and which have seen us take a good point against a strong-ish Polish side."
Of course, some pretty significant decisions were made over the duration of this double-header, and we never know whether they were right or not.
Hodgson opted to leave four players out of his starting line-up against San Marino, for some to protect them from a further booking and suspension, others the potential for injury.
Together with banned Liverpool duo Steven Gerrard and Glen Johnson, it meant half of England's team had not played for 10 days by kick-off, which could account for some sluggishness.
Yet if those players had been used, and the fate Hodgson was trying to avoid occurred, the coach would have been lambasted.
And he cannot be blamed either for the postponement that left his players kicking their heels for a further 24 hours.
Equally, the move to play on Wednesday - as requested by FIFA - and reject Poland's request to postpone until November - was made on commercial grounds.
If England had just flown home, they would not have needed to take sleeping pills to try and counteract the excess energy, consumed in the build-up to a game that never happened.
Yet would Poland's players not have been in exactly the same position? For the FA's part, it has refused to comment on reports that sleeping pills were used.
When discussing the sodden surface, Hodgson was at pains to point out it was the same for both teams. In these days of sports science, that is also true of preparation.
In any case, who is to say England would have done any better in November, when they would only have had two days to prepare?
As England's next game is also against San Marino, when Montenegro are in action against Moldova, the next true test comes in Podgorica on March 26.
Win and England are back in charge of their own destiny. Draw - which they did twice with Montenegro in the Euro 2012 qualification campaign - and nothing much changes. Lose and it starts to look very difficult to claim an automatic place in Brazil.
Jack Wilshere, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones should all be back to provide competition by then.
The former is the more eye-catching, the latter two arguably required to a greater degree in this John Terry-less era.
"It is going to be a tight group ," said Hodgson.
"The fact is we know all matches in this group are going to be tough ones. Montenegro have already shown that because they weren't being touted as favourites beforehand.
"Ideally we would be sitting here with 12 points but under the circumstances, eight is probably a fair reflection of what we have been able to do so far."
