Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain fails to advance his centre midfield claims for Liverpool and England

Liverpool's new £35m summer signing is desperate to play in centre midfield for club and country, but he did little to impress in this stuttering win over Malta

Oxlade-Chamberlain is desperate to play in central midfield (Getty)

Given the week that’s gone, it’s hard to say whether this display was a good or bad thing as regards to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s ambitions to play in central midfield.

It was certainly a bad game and also perhaps ironically inevitable that, in the very first match after he opted to leave Arsenal and turned down Chelsea because he didn’t want to play wide… he would start out wide.

And while you couldn’t quite say all eyes were on him after becoming the only member of the England starting XI to move this week following his transfer to Liverpool, that’s probably just as well, because this 4-0 win over Malta wasn’t really a display to impress. He did very little.

To be fair to Oxlade-Chamberlain, this was also one of those grimly thankless games against a massed defence where it’s almost impossible to impress. For a player who thrives on energy and running, there just wasn’t that much space to run into.

That was illustrated as early as the 15 minutes when the 24-year-old opted to cut inside rather than go down the wing, only to run into more bodies. When he did finally go down the right, he just ran out of pitch.

One of the other ironies of Oxlade-Chamberlain’s recent career path is that, beyond the fact he has looked so much more effective at wing-back, his crossing is now a hugely productive weapon and had recently resulted in some big moments for Arsenal. It almost resulted in a game-breaking moment here, only for one nicely whipped ball to be headed away by the Maltese defence.

Oxlade-Chamberlain was deployed on the wing against Malta (Getty)

As England toiled, it was difficult not to divine some symbolism in some of Oxlade-Chamberlain’s other decisions, especially given his previous praise for Steven Gerrard.

He did attempt a very Gerrard-style burst through the middle before half-time, and then offered one of England’s rare moments of danger by turning nicely in the box and then trying a shot.

It said much about the performance of Gareth Southgate’s side, rather than what Oxlade-Chamberlain was trying, that this rare moment of quality was greeted with ironic cheers. That was how turgid England were, and why it would be so difficult to judge any of the players’ performances.

The England international signed for Liverpool on Thursday (Liverpool FC)

It’s also why it would be harsh to say they opened up once Oxlade-Chamberlain was taken off for eventual goalscorer Danny Welbeck on 76 minutes. That was really the result of Malta tiring rather than any release in play.

Of arguably much more relevance was a different question.

Given the opposition, why did Southgate opt for a central two of Jake Livermore and Jordan Henderson. Would it not have been more useful to try Oxlade-Chamberlain there, not least for the way his all-action running could have just created a bit more havoc in the eight-man Maltese backline when it was most required.

We’ll now never know, but that is also why it’s difficult to know whether this entire game was good or bad for Oxlade-Chamberlain’s midfield ambitions.

He didn’t get to play there, but then England didn’t play much at all.