Gareth Southgate had a straightforward message for his attacking players after their 1-1 draw against Ukraine in Euro 2024 qualifying. He told them they didn't meet the expected standards and warned that he doesn't want to see sluggish performances like that again.
Players like James Maddison, Bukayo Saka, Harry Kane, and Jude Bellingham were part of the attack, but Southgate acknowledged that England's performance wasn't as sharp as their previous victories in Italy or goal-filled matches against North Macedonia and Malta.
Quoted by the Daily Mail, Southgate said: "Clearly, most of our attacking play wasn't at the level that we would have hoped it to be. I think by the time we scored the goal we'd had over 70 per cent of the ball but that was our first attempt on target."
"We turned over [lost] too many balls that we wouldn't normally. I wouldn't expect that to happen again. We know that the patterns that we worked during the week are what we always do, so it's not that we approach the game in a different way."
"We tried to refresh things to give them a different sort of problem but today our forward play, bar the goal and Bukayo Saka’s effort that hit the bar, wasn't at the level that it has been in our previous games."
