LET’S GET READY T0 RUMBLE

Southgate: My players are primed for action... they don’t need any Churchill routine from me

IN ONE of his more memorable utterances as a player, Gareth Southgate apparently claimed that when England needed Winston Churchill, they got Iain Duncan Smith.

It was half-time in Shizuoka, June 21, 2002, and Rivaldo had just cancelled out Michael Owen’s strike. Southgate, an unused substitute, sat, looking towards Sven Goran Eriksson, waiting for a rallying call-toarms against Brazil.

It never came and the rest is familiar, painful history.

Yet nor will it come in the final moments before this England team goes blinking into the lights of the Volgograd Arena to begin their World Cup challenge.

He is a proud patriot, Southgate, but there will be no tub- thumping, no chest-beating... no Churchill.

Southgate (left) is convinced his players could not be more ready – and he is not going to mess with their heads.

He explained: “When I was a player there were moments before the game when I thought ‘all the manager can do now is **** it up for me and put me off my game.’

“I was ready and didn’t want to hear too much more. And these boys are ready. There will be some key messages but it will just be about transferring what they are doing every day because that level they are playing at every day is high and getting better all the time.

“They won’t need to step it up tomorrow from what they have been doing in training because that level they have been hitting is high.”

The talk about ‘key messages’ is typical Southgate, a