Obviously the new England manager didn’t say anything to his captain, Wayne Rooney, about how to play, because as he made clear after the game, that’s not his place.

"Sometimes he played a little deep, but I can't stop Wayne if he thinks that's the right position to go to play a little deep," said Allardyce.

Not to worry. He must have said something to somebody because his side won with a brilliantly delayed goal against a Slovakian side which had made things awkward by having a man sent off with half-an-hour remaining.

But aside from the tactical challenge of earning a victory on the night, Allardyce also had to deal with the overall strategy set out by the former Football Association (FA) chairman Greg Dyke which - until it was changed on Wednesday by the new chairman Greg Clarke - involved England reaching the semi-finals of the Euro 2020 tournament before reclaiming the World Cup after a 56-year interlude at the 2022 finals in Qatar.

So on Sunday, Big Sam would have been safe in saying: "Boys, give it a good crack here, win it if you like although it’s obviously not for me to say, but remember - if we get to the 2018 finals in Russia we can’t have anyone going off message. Just to remind you, it’s 2022 when we win. Right? Good. Anyway, back to tonight, let’s all go out and express ourselves if that’s okay…"  

Now, though, all bets are off. Clarke has announced that England’s target of winning the 2022 World Cup has been cancelled. Phew!!

Perhaps bearing in mind England’s distracted performance in losing 2-1 to Iceland in the Euro 2016 round-of-16, when the players were clearly concerned about getting to within one more victory of a semi-final they were not due to be contesting until four years later, Clarke explained: "I'm not going to put pressure on and say we are going to win this tournament or that tournament."

So there we have it - a manager who is loath to tell his players how to play, working within an organisation that isn’t aiming to win anything anytime soon.

Is this the right approach? Well let’s put it this way. The last England manager to predict his team would win the World Cup was Sir Alf Ramsey. And we all know how pear-shaped that went.

It’s an approach that is already influencing Premier League managers - at Manchester United, for instance, Jose Mourinho has been talking about regaining the title “at some point” while making it clear that he doesn’t want to pressurise his players by expecting victory in the next couple of seasons at least.

Actually, I only think I heard Mourinho say this. He may not have done. But he probably did. Okay, just checked, and what he said was: "I think Man United has to say we want to win the title." So a bad example. But then it’s always the exception that proves the rule. I rest my case.

It’s fair to say, however, that the FA approach has not yet been taken up by UK Sport. As I write, the Opening Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Paralympics is taking place, and the British team entering the Maracanã Stadium has been given the target of earning 121 medals - one more than the total won at the wildly successful London 2012 Paralympics - within a range of 113 to 165.

UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl described the target as “incredibly challenging” while British Paralympic Games chief executive Tim Hollingsworth called it an "ambitious one".

Hollingsworth has had his own challenging task this week in defending his team against recent claims made by London T37 200 metres silver medallist Bethany Woodward, and backed by the father of her former sprint relay colleague Olivia Breen, that the classification system for disabled athletes is being manipulated to boost medal chances.

As it happens, UK Sport is due to launch an enquiry into the classification of athletes once the Rio Paralympics are over.

In the meantime, however, the target is about to be pursued assiduously by a team boasting talents such as Kadeena Cox, who is in the mix for medals in both athletics and cycling, four-times swimming champion Ellie Simmonds, and six-times wheelchair racing champion David Weir.

The host nation too are pursuing a lofty ambition - Andrew Parsons, President of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee, has set the target of finishing fifth on the medal table.

"It is an aggressive target, it’s an ambitious target," he said.

"We were seventh in London - to finish fifth, based on London results, we would have to beat the US and Australia.

"There has been a lot of investment, mainly made by the public sector in Brazil.

"We have already seen some evidence of growth, mainly younger athletes winning medals at World Championships.

"If you combine that with what I call ‘the London generation’ we have a very strong team.

"We cannot go backwards and say, 'let's finish eighth.'"

That lofty Brazilian target, according to the belief of the International Paralympic Committee President Sir Philip Craven, is a big part of the reason why ticket sales are edging towards the 1.7 million mark, which will mean exceeding the total sold at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics.

Just over a fortnight ago Games organisers set a target of selling two million tickets out of the total of 2.4 million available - as sales stood at just 300,000.

"I think that we've seen from the massive increase in the ticket sales that the Cariocas and the Brasileiros are ready for these Games and they want more after the Olympics and they particularly want to see the Brazilian athletes," Craven said.

"They could finish up fifth in the medal table."

The ticket target sounded a forlorn ambition at the time. But ambition needs to be a bit…well, ambitious. Otherwise it’s not what it purports to be.