Gareth Southgate laments lack of time on training pitch after England's narrow defeat in Germany

Southgate's experiment with a back three was moderately successful, even in defeat

Gareth Southgate's side showed promise but ultimately went down to defeat (Getty)

Gareth Southgate revealed that he had been forced to prepare his players for his new three-man defence on a tactics board, having decided six weeks ago that it was the best way to face Germany.

The new system was a success, bringing the best out of Adam Lallana and Dele Alli and allowing England to press high up the pitch, but the new manager has had only one and a half training sessions to introduce it.

“We had to be a bit creative in how we did it,” said Southgate – who was satisfied, having taken a gamble by employing the first England three-man defence since the 2008 defeat in Croatia which saw Steve McClaren sacked. “We couldn’t train on the field too many times. We are able to walk through certain things and have meetings and work through things on tactics boards and discuss things and get the players’ experiences from their clubs. It wasn’t an alien system in terms of several of the players were playing in it and I felt it suited others that aren’t.”

Though Lukas Podolski’s winner illustrated Germany’s superior cutting edge on England – who missed two good first half chances – the new system demonstrated that Southgate has more tactical imagination that his predecessors Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson. The new system was built around getting the most out of Alli and Lallana, who proved to be the game’s stand-out players.

”I think it is the perfect system for the likes of Lallana and Alli, who are both very, very intelligent players and it allowed us to press high up the pitch,” Southgate said. “I have seen Germany pin teams back and you end up with six at the back if you play with the system we have played in the past. I didn’t want to sit there and take pressure all night. We want to be on the front foot that system allowed us to do that and the intelligence of the way we pressed particular the front three created the good chances we had.

“I decided six weeks ago that is what I was going to do. I was clear what we wanted to do, but we have to look at individual opponents because we can also play with out and out wingers. We can play with a different set up at the back. I wouldn’t say that’s the way we are going to do it every game.”

The night was marred by England supporters singing about their “50 German bombers” song about the RAF shooting down planes in World War II. Asked about this, Southgate said the FA expected supporters to conduct themselves well when guests in a foreign country.

“To be honest, I didn’t hear what was said,” he replied. “It has been mentioned to me. The travelling support, in terms of numbers and the way they backed the team, is brilliant and we would encourage them do that in the right way at all times.”

Southgate said that the Football Association had chosen to wait until England had returned home to decide how mark the loss of life in Wednesday’s terror atrocity at Westminster.

“I don’t know all the detail because the story was breaking as we were travelling and preparing for the game,” he said. “There was some discussion about whether we should do something tonight but we felt it was more appropriate to do that when we get back to London as it is our home game [against Lithuania in Sunday’s World Cup qualifier].

“I think in my mind the identity and one of the key characteristics of us as a nation is that we carry on in moments like that and we don’t allow people to put us off what we want to do on a day to day basis and how we go about our working lives.

“London in particular has suffered that before and we wanted to put on a performance that had the passion and the desire which reflected that. We haven’t got the win which we would have liked but I think people can see the commitment of the players in the way they played.”