Rob Andrew says England are now more competitive against Tri-Nations teams despite this autumn's defeats.
England lost 18-9 against Australia and 19-6 to New Zealand in November.
But Andrew, the Rugby Football Union's director of elite rugby, said England had shown marked progress against the southern hemisphere superpowers.
"We have closed the gap considerably when you look at what happened last autumn, when we were outplayed in both games against them," he said.
The former England fly-half claimed that Martin Johnson's side were far better than the one "hammered" 28-14 by Australia and 32-6 against New Zealand a year ago.
"We have closed the gap but we have not closed it far enough," Andrew added.
"We were very competitive but the finishing was missing. That's the difference between how we perform against the northern hemisphere teams compared to the southern hemisphere teams."
Andrew admitted England's results this autumn - which also included a laboured 16-9 victory against Argentina - had been "disappointing" but cited the long list of injuries and insisted that he had complete faith in Johnson as manager and his coaching team.
"We put Martin in place to rebuild the England team to get us back to where we feel we need to be as a union," said Andrew, who appointed Johnson in April 2008.
"We knew it was going to be a tough road and we knew we needed somebody who could withstand a lot of pressure to drive us through to 2011 [the World Cup].
"There will be some bumps in the road and we will learn from those and move forward into the Six Nations and beyond.
"We are confident around the ability of that coaching team to take this team forward. The transformation from the autumn last year to the end of the Six Nations was there for everybody to see.
"We didn't win the Six Nations but we came second, we scored the most tries and conceded the least points and had a team that was beginning to develop.
"The list of players missing [this autumn] clearly made life difficult for the coaching team."
Johnson admits some critisism is justified
Johnson, England's 2003 World Cup-winning captain, has hit out at the "almost hysterical" criticism of his team and coaches John Wells and Mike Ford.
"If we have not been playing well, which we haven't, we will stand there and take criticism," said the former Leicester star, who has lost eight of 14 Tests since taking charge.
"But some of the criticism has been so wide of the mark and almost hysterical.
"It becomes ridiculous at times and it goes too far. Frankly, a lot of people don't actually know what goes on and what happens.
"The easy thing for me to do would be to go, 'Yes, you are right', sack x, y and z and buy yourself some time and blame someone else.
"That would be easy to do but it wouldn't be right.
"It is not nice to sack people but if I thought the decision was in the best interests of the team, I would make it."
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