England focussing on playing to their strengths for World Cup success – Gareth Southgate

In the cold light of day, life – which appeared to have drained out of Wembley entirely for 96 minutes on Thursday night – moves on and there is a wider context in which you have to feel a little bit sorry for Gareth Southgate.

As arguably the world’s greatest player heads with his Argentina team-mates to Ecuador for a must-win final group game to keep alive their World Cup hopes, England will fly out to Lithuania to begin their own build-up to the finals.

Dele Alli will be back among them, hopefully a few others will have packed their ‘A’ game, and we will be able to appreciate more on Sunday night what we have got rather than what we haven’t.

“In international football, you don’t have a chequebook with hundreds of millions,” Southgate said. No bringing in Three-Lionel, in other words. “We have to coach and we have to improve people. That is the great challenge.

“The first objective was to qualify. We have done that. Now we look at how we build and evolve and improve the team.

“One thing’s for sure, I am not standing here thinking, ‘Isn’t it brilliant to have qualified for the World Cup; I am feeling all the love!’ But I get what that is.” 

Maybe we should take that moment to celebrate with the players the achievement of reaching the finals. As Southgate himself points out, not many of his players have been to one before – six, in fact, from the 22 names on the teamsheet against Slovenia.

In that light, the trip to Russia begins to look more like an end-of-school outing – and who wouldn’t want a teacher as cool as Mr Southgate?

He genuinely seems to have built a strong rapport with his charges. The 47-year-old’s easy, likeable manner, while not possessing the “carpe diem”, energetic, standing-on-tables theatrics of Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society, is quietly inspirational nonetheless. A modern day Mr Chips, perhaps.

The players face some stiff examinations first, though, and they don’t come much tougher than Germany on November 10 and Brazil four days later.

It will be a measure of exactly what standard Southgate’s young class is at and where they need to be, and the manager is under no illusions.

“In every position it’s pretty clear what we have,” he said. “We’ve got to look at what we’re capable of doing, look at our strengths, and work out how to build an effective team around that.

“I didn’t see anything on Thursday that surprised me enormously, but the key now is what we are going to do over the next few days. Then we’ve got two games where we’ve got a clear idea already of what we want to do and how we want to use the players.”

England, remember, were in special measures just 13 months ago following the Iceland debacle and the sacking of Sam Allardyce. Right from Southgate’s very first days as the supply teacher, there has been the sort of well-structured lesson plan which Roy Hodgson seemed to lack in the build-up to Euro 2016.

At the same time, while there has undoubtedly been an improvement, the assessment of where we are now has to be an honest one. After the wake-up call of such a drab performance this week, Southgate accepts there is still a pretty full syllabus to get through.

Jordan Henderson is sound rather than brilliant. Eric Dier still raises more questions than he answers. Marcus Rashford is a promising B-plus but Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is drifting towards a D, for “dropped”, unless he bucks his ideas up. Too often the England defence collectively are all at C. At least Harry Kane is consistently A-star.

Beneath this general under-achievement, Southgate is adamant his kids are just misunderstood. He recognises that is an unpalatable excuse for multi-millionaires but if he is willing to trust in them, perhaps so should we.

“We’ve got some good characters and personalities that maybe the public don’t necessarily understand fully or know properly,” Southgate said. “We’re in an era where it must be difficult for the supporters to relate to players because of what they earn.

“But these are good kids, desperate to play for England. At the moment they just need the chance to grow. My job is to support them and make sure we give them that opportunity.”

Making it through qualifying as champions of Group F marks the end of the first semester. Going into finals, it is important Southgate pays close attention to his end-of-term report.

Satisfactory, but needs to do better.