If a sheikh or oligarch could have taken two players home with him at the end of this Euro 2012 qualifier, Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey would have been high on the list. Wales are moving into a phase when they make the best use of scattered talent while England went back to squandering more plentiful resources.

In an auction of the 22 who started here, a Welshman would have drawn the second highest bid. Taking age and game‑changing talent into account, only Wayne Rooney would have fetched more than Bale, with Ramsey and Ashley Young also attracting fancy sums. One country went home proud and encouraged. The other traipsed out bemoaning the deadening effect of Wembley and the stodginess of their midfield.

Robert "Earny" Earnshaw was described in the programme as a "highly experienced goal-poacher who has found the net at every level of the game".

Every level, that is, except this one. Earnshaw's miss in front of England's posts on 76 minutes was so bad the crowd recoiled in shock.

Then pity took over. And relief – for England. On the replay, if Earnshaw taps the ball over the line instead of spooning it over Joe Hart's bar then Wales probably leave London with a point and the Capello era shakes in the wind again. Instead England need only a draw in Montenegro to win their group and old failings can be buried.

The Spurs-Arsenal axis of Bale and Ramsey is one to revive Welsh hope.

Bale was sometimes triple-teamed by England, with James Milner, Young and Ashley Cole all told to compress his space and block him off as he turned inside from the right touchline.

Bale's normal channel is the left, but here – as against Montenegro on Friday night – Gary Speed, the Wales manager, switched him to the right, where he ran up against Cole, the more experienced England full-back. On the other side, Chris Smalling could claim to have smothered Bale in the recent Manchester United-Spurs Premier League game. Given the choice, though, between facing an opponent with 90 caps (Cole) or one with two (Smalling), Bale would doubtless have chosen the United man.

Seldom these days will England feel an urge to cross the halfway line and kidnap a player from another home union. Ryan Giggs drew covetous looks from England managers desperate to fill a problem position. And watching Spurs last term, Capello must have wished Bale's mother had sped across the border to give birth in England, as Michael Owen's mum did from her home in Flintshire.

Bale's favoured flank is less of a no-man's land for England nowadays, as Downing and Young can both operate as lefties, but it was a measure of Capello's respect for the Tottenham express that the No4 team in Fifa's rankings (don't laugh) altered their line-up to nullify a danger posed by the side rated 117 in the world.

"Gareth Bale is a really important player for Wales. I watched the game [against Montenegro on Friday] and he played really well. I saw the game he played against Man City [for Spurs] and he was so-so, not the top," Capello said. "The game he played with Wales he improved a lot. He ran a lot, was really fast. The problem is that it's difficult to stop him. He receives the ball, attacks the space, is fast – he's really fantastic."

Capello's interest reflects the deep impression left in Italy by Bale's scintillating performances for Spurs against Internazionale in last season's Champions League. "He makes a difference, always," Capello said before the game. "We need to be careful at every moment when he receives the ball, to find a system to stop him and to stop the people passing the ball to him."

A theory on the scouting network is that a few early "softeners" can still have an adverse effect on his confidence. Nothing too brutal: physicality sufficient to cause discouragement will often suffice. England are not above this, of course, and when Milner upended the PFA Player of the Year after 20 minutes it was obvious Bale was being advised not to treat Wembley as his playground.

A naturally left-footed, zippy runner and lethal crosser is bound to appear a different player when deprived of his chance to run straight and true. There is, in the redeployed wide-man's work, a constant turning and twisting to achieve the balance and thrust that comes automatically on the "correct" side. This was Bale's fate as Joe Ledley filled his usual role on the left.

For Wales, plainly, Bale will carry the curse of the potentially world-class talent locked into a country who cannot hope to build a vehicle big enough for his gifts. There is no guarantee England could either, so no chauvinism is intended. In Speed, Bale and Ramsey have found a young and energetic manager to make national service a rewarding experience. They will be joined again, when he is available, by Liverpool's Craig Bellamy, who would have buried the chance Earnshaw missed to embarrass England.