“I have to blame myself.”

Whether his team wins or loses, England boss Eddie Jones is a master at deflecting attention away from players and onto himself.

In the build-up to many of England’s biggest games over the years, the outspoken Australian has always made it a point to make sure all the attention is on him, allowing his players to focus on the game at hand.

Yesterday’s defeat to Scotland came as a huge surprise to many, especially following England’s Six Nations and Autumn Nations Cup wins last year, and while many of his start players failed to perform, Jones has once again looked to deflect the attention away from his squad by taking the blame.

Speaking after the 11-6 defeat at Twickenham, Jones said you “never atone” for a game like yesterday and took full responsibility for not preparing his team “well enough” for Scotland.

“You never atone for a game like this. This stays with you for a long time,” Jones said.

“But the most important thing is that we get together and we find a way to improve our performance and play like England do when we come up against Italy next week.”

“We just couldn’t find a way to get into the game. On a day like this the set-piece will always be important, the contest in the air will be important, the gainline will be important, and we couldn’t win any of those areas.

“We just seemed to be off the pace and I have to blame myself, I didn’t prepare the team well enough. The players play the game but sometimes you have those days and we had one today. Scotland played very well.

“They had a particular game plan which they stuck to and executed really well. They had enormous possession in the first half and a big penalty count and we’ve only got ourselves to blame for the discipline issues. It was just one of those days.”