Gareth Southgate: England should stick to their guns against Bulgaria despite Czech Republic ‘aberration’

England succumbed to a 2-1 defeat to the Czechs on Friday but Southgate insists it should not provoke panic in the camp

Gareth Southgate has told his England players to stick with the plan for Monday’s match away to Bulgaria, as he insisted Friday’s defeat to Czech Republic was an “aberration”.

The 49-year-old admitted that the 2-1 loss was one of the worst performances of his time in charge, but stressed that it shouldn’t cause panic, especially as regards wider issues like the formation.

“I think the overall performance was rare,” he said in the Vasil Levski Stadium. “I think within that there are things, as I say, I watch every minute, I know the strengths and weaknesses of every player and when you play, you see things that happen as patterns.

“That’s inevitable, so you’re always conscious of that, but we have to make sure that the overall was an aberration.

“I think there will have been performances that didn’t float at the start of that period. So, certainly in the last 18 months, that would be the first time that we’ve let ourselves down in terms of the level of the performance, but I’m also realistic: that can happen.

“The players aren’t robots. You can have nights where you don’t hit the level. I think there’s always a tactical and technical element to that. But to a man they have been entirely honest about that. None of them have hidden from the fact that they are all disappointed individually and, of course, collectively.”

Asked whether he’d move to three at the back after a hugely uncertain night for a four-man defence, Southgate said: “I think we have to stay calm on the back of a result, that we don’t throw everything out of the window. The best way to improve is to play in the same way and play better, and do it with better detail. And of course, there are players who we’re giving football to in key areas, like Declan Rice who’s still 19 years old. I’ve got to always remember that, that we’re putting a lot of onus on young players.

Look at those moments and say: ‘OK, this is the time for a solid performance, get back on track. Remember the objective is to qualify.’ We’ve been trying to qualify, develop the team, blood players, and the other night that didn’t quite work for us. But, it’s the first time it hasn’t.”

Southgate said they have had discussions about control of matches, and “game management”.

Southgate has called for calm in spite of England's defensive frailties (Getty)

“We do have meetings about that. At times, in the past we have put scenarios into training and of course a lot of that, the players just have to live through that, through experiences.

“It’s still a team that has got to go through those sorts of experiences, a lot of them haven’t played in qualifiers in those sorts of scenarios but it’s key to winning big matches. You’re not going to win every game by four or five goals, especially going away from home and you do have to manage those periods, especially the last 10 minutes, where you’ve got to say OK, we haven’t played well but we’ve come away with a point and then we’d be sitting here saying we could qualify tomorrow night.”