Two underwhelming games later and Gareth Southgate wants his England team to start their European Championship in earnest when they face Slovenia in their final group game tonight.
The England manager spoke of “hitting the reset button” after having “open and honest” conversations with his players following the disappointing draw against Denmark that drew criticism from former players.
England are already qualified for the last-16, as a result of Albania losing to Spain, but want to finish as group winners so to avoid a possible meeting with hosts Germany in the next round.
However, beyond the result, England need to show improvements in performance and Declan Rice has said that will involve the team playing on the front foot.
There is expected to be just the one change to the lineup with Conor Gallagher replacing Trent Alexander-Arnold in midfield, so a back four will remain and the make-up of England’s attack will also be unchanged.
Instead, it will be more of a change of approach in Cologne than anything. “Our identity for a while has been pretty clear. We haven’t quite seen that in the first couple of games and there was a need to have a reset button and have open and honest conversations,” said Southgate.
“That is a reflection — we reflect as a coaching team and the players are reflective. So nobody has been ducking anything this week, nobody has been alone in their thoughts.
“It’s a real collective because we’re all on the same page. That allows us to assess where we were and how we need to progress in the same direction.”
Southgate conceded his players were not pressing with enough intensity during the narrow win against Serbia and the draw with Denmark in their opening Euro matches. After taking the lead in both games, Southgate’s players faded and allowed their opposition to seize control.
But Rice believes a different type of England performance will come as a result of discussions with staff. A statement win similar to their victory over Wales at the World Cup in 2022, which came after a goalless draw against the United States, is the aim.
“I can tell you now it’s not our game plan to want to sit in a low block. I think that’s what Gareth’s got here — a really good relationship with the players, he’s really open to ideas and opinions,” Rice said.
“As players on the pitch, this week’s been really good because if something hasn’t been right, we’d stop the session and speak about it.
“We’d say what we think is better, we’d do another repetition of it, then we’d see the improvements. The coaching staff are fully on the same page as us. If you look at England’s games, our last 25, 30 games we’ve played at Wembley, we’ve suffocated teams at the higher end of the pitch.
“We’ve been working on different ways. I think against Slovenia you’ll see a more higher pressing approach from us that we’ve been working on. I think you’ll see a team that wants to be on the front-foot and wants to press Slovenia high up the pitch.”
Building momentum is now the aim
England have recovered from iffy starts to competitions before, including the last Euros when they gained momentum by defeating Germany in the quarter-finals. Rice knows the onus is on the players to take control again.
“With my season at Arsenal, I’ve been constantly wanting to be on the front foot, win balls higher up the pitch,” Rice explained.
“That’s the mindset of the team as well and I think we’ll see that in this game in the way we are going to approach the game and the way we are going to go for it.
“We want to top the group, we want to have a great performance. We want to stop these questions about our energy. We want to show we can press high and be that team that people want us to be.
“Hopefully it can swing the other way as it kind of did at the World Cup. We drew with the USA with a similar performance to their one against Denmark and then went on to beat Wales 3-0, which was a really good statement.
“And the same happened in Euro 2021 when we drew with Scotland then had a really good comfortable win against the Czech Republic.”
Southgate is also looking for a strong performance as well as positive result in Cologne as England try to wrestle back the initiative. “I think what we’ve talked about is performance,” said Southgate. “We know that the results have put us in a strong position, but we want to play better as a team.
“You’ve got to move away from the emotion and focus on how do we get better performances. That’s our job as a coaching staff, where we really have to get the focus right.
“With the players, there’s always going to be a lot of emotion around tournament football, but the process of building a team is to prepare, play, reflect, learn, improve and that’s what we’ve got to do.
“There’s of course a lot of other things involved in pressing a team, but when you boil it down, you’ve got to keep looking for improvement and seeking perfection, which you’re never going to get.
“But we know our performances have to be at a better level — and completely understand the reaction to that.”
