Yet Hodgson was entitled to be disappointed with Sturridge's finishing and looked distinctly unimpressed when another chance, from Glen Johnson's cross, missed the target again.
It is at least a measure of their self-belief, which seems somehow to be intact, that they have created vaguely winning chances from distinctly unpromising positions, in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Galle, but each time they have mucked it up.
Despite those half-chances, United were still looking distinctly off key and were given a chance to regroup just before the hour when suddenly half of the stadium was plunged into darkness due to floodlight failure.
On the Sunday of the Old Trafford Test, he was distinctly reticent about England's chance of completing their final day run chase.
Yet chance operations were distinctly not a significant part of Western compositional techniques until Cage championed them in 1951, first with his piano piece, "Music of Changes," quickly followed by the notorious silence piece "4'33".
In this study, a statistically significant 72%% of farmers were correctly assigned to their type, confirming that family types ranked their problems distinctly (based on the maximum chance criterion).
Having appeared distinctly downbeat about Hennessy's chances before the Bet365 Gold Cup, he's only gone and won it anyway, having driven his apparently unwilling mount all the way round.
I picked Chelsea to win the title before the start of the season although I now believe it is still Manchester City's to lose but Mourinho writing off his own team's chances has a distinctly hollow ring for such a serial winner.
'The Brits are more fun-loving.' Was she by any chance referring to the islanders' distinctly un-American national pastime of getting sloshed?
11.48pm BST Kuchar belts his drive straight down the middle at 18. Up the hole, McIlroy knocks his second pin high, and will have a chance to salvage something from a distinctly average day.
