Broadly accurate on us there. We're not too concerned with having less PL starters because our players in the PL were always the functional lads rather than the skill players since around the time Robbie Keane retired, and when your team is entirely made up of those you find it hard to do much of anything.
The Luxembourg game was a real low point but the team has turned it around since then - and i would say our draw against Portugal was actually fairly unfortunate as we weren't threatened by them and had a goal ruled out very harshly (or to be frank, wrongly) at the death.
We're probably still 3-4 years away from this group's full potential - lads like Nathan Collins and Michael Obafemi are really starting to hit form in the English leagues, Bazunu looks like he'll be an absolute star, Knight should be a PL regular next year and they're all a long way before their peak. It's a young, exciting squad with their best years largely ahead of them and more good prospects in the underage groups, but it's probably fair to say we're not fully 'there' yet. We are very well coached and a very positive side at this point, Scotland and Ukraine are better than us on paper unquestionably, but there's a lot of optimism going into this set of games, we have a technically accomplished starting 11 with crisp passing and a lot of speed and the team has really got the fans on board again. We wouldn't expect to win the group, but we certainly wouldn't see it as unachievable.