Steve Borthwick opted against making any changes to his XV for the visit of Wales to Twickenham on Saturday.
That is despite a far-from-perfect in Italy last time out, when England failed to secure a bonus point and looked second-best in spells.
But former England winger Chris Ashton explained why Borthwick has kept faith in the current lineup.
“I don’t think that England need to do anything differently when they play Wales, and I don’t think that Steve Borthwick can at this stage,” he told Gambling Zone.
“They won the first game, OK, there wasn’t a bonus point in there. I heard Steve’s comments in the post-match interview where he said that the team has only had three high intensity, difficult training sessions together to put things in place.
“Remember there are a lot of new faces in the squad – new caps – so these players wouldn’t have had that much time on the pitch together. They will improve as a team with the more time they spend together, so I don’t think making changes now would be the right approach.
“England need continuity. You could see in the performance against Italy that things were coming together. I saw a lot of effort and endeavour in the performance, but the timing was a little bit off, so that is something that should improve this weekend.
“I thought England were caught out a couple of times earlier on in defence, but things dramatically improved in the second half. Steve made a couple of tweaks and things improved.
“The Italian attack caused England problems, so that is the bit they will want to make sure they don’t get caught out on when they play Wales at the weekend. In order for England to do that, they need to keep the same personnel so the team can really start to build a connection together.”
