THEY might have achieved the seemingly unachievable at the weekend, but in truth, England are not alone.

Spain have now lost four friendly matches since they were crowned World Cup winners in Johannesburg 16 months ago, with Saturday's 1-0 defeat at Wembley following hot on the heels of a 4-1 trouncing in Argentina, a humiliating 4-0 reverse to Portugal and a 2-1 loss in Italy.

The side that looked all but invincible in South Africa, save of course for an unexpected blip in the group stage against Switzerland, suddenly appears fallible.

So is it simply a case of Spain's players being unable to lift themselves for the humdrum fare of an international friendly? Or more alarmingly from a Spanish perspective, could it be that the rest of the world has worked out how to play against a side that, while mesmeric in terms of their ability to retain and recycle the ball, can be somewhat one dimensional in attack?

“I don't think it's a case of us approaching these games in a relaxed or complacent manner,” said Spain boss Vicente Del Bosque, effectively ruling out the first of these possible explanations. “We have had four defeats, but we have certainly not been taking any of these games lightly. We played at full pace here and the fact that England only really had one opportunity all game shows the extent of the way we dominated the game.”

Nevertheless, their dominance did not translate into too many goalscoring opportunities, and while they swept through qualifying for Euro 2012 with a 100 per cent record, there are enough potential chinks in Spain's armoury to suggest that next summer's finals are far from a foregone conclusion.

Parts of the European champions' play at the weekend were dizzying in terms of the speed at which they moved the ball and the intricacy of the passing moves they constructed, but by dropping deep, flooding the midfield with two holding midfielders and instructing their wingers to prevent the Spanish full-backs from wreaking havoc on the overlap, England were able to neuter much of their opponents' threat.

Once England took the lead, there was no discernible change in Spain's play, and the absence of a Plan B is a handicap Del Bosque will have to overcome next summer.

For all that Xavi and Andres Iniesta are rightly lauded as two of the finest players in the game, if David Villa does not score, it is hard to see where too many of Spain's goals are going to come from, and it was noticeable that the tempo of Saturday's game only really changed when Cesc Fabregas came off the substitutes' bench at the interval.

“We've always faced problems when sides defend deep against us, but in the past, we've found solutions to the problems,” said Del Bosque. “We suffered a bit from a lack of control in the final third. We will draw lessons from what happened here and I am sure we will be right when the big tournament comes around next summer.

“We had lots of possession and I didn't really think England troubled us on the counter-attack. We showed a lot of patience, probably as much patience as you can ever show against a team who play as deep as that. But maybe we lacked a little bit of speed in the defining moments of the game.”

It is quite a leap to suggest that Spain could have done with some of England's qualities at the weekend, but there is a school of thought that suggests the world champions could certainly do with an alternative to their preferred tiki-taka style.

That said, though, they have swept all before them at the last two major tournaments, and Del Bosque was only willing to damn England with faint praise after Saturday's setback.

“I would say that the England side, both in this game and in general, are a very physical, powerful team,” he said. “They carried out their manager's orders to the absolute letter.

“The plan they had for the game was carried out perfectly. I am not saying we are better or worse, but we play a different style. Our style of football is totally different from what you saw from England out there.”