Big changes planned for Ivorians’ visit
GARETH Southgate is planning wholesale changes against Ivory Coast as England continue to fine-tune ahead of this winter’s World Cup in Qatar.
A year that the Three Lions hope to end in glory at the Lusail Stadium on December 18 got under way with a testing 2-1 comeback win against Switzerland at Wembley on Saturday evening.
Breel Embolo opened the scoring for the side ranked 14th in the world and England rode their luck at times before Luke Shaw equalised and skipper Harry Kane converted a match-winning penalty.
Southgate mixed callow players with experienced internationals in the Wembley friendly and plans to switch things around as preparations for Qatar continue against Ivory Coast tomorrow.
“We’ll make changes,” the England boss said. “We think that’s the right thing to do.
“We want to keep all of the squad involved. I think that has been a strength for us.
Players who come in perform well at the level and the team march on. They need to feel that we’ve got the confidence in them to go into any game and we’re also at a stage of the season where their load is heavy and we’ve got to make sure we try and navigate that in the best way possible.”
Southgate has already seen six players withdraw from the England squad and there are question marks over Emile Smith Rowe and John Stones, with the former absent against Switzerland and the latter pulling up in the warm-up.
“With John, he just felt a bit of tightness before the game,” he said. “We’re certain it’s not too serious.
“It could be that he’s OK before Tuesday but we didn’t really have time before the game to assess properly so there was no point in taking a risk at that moment and we will find out a bit more (on Sunday).
“Emile did some work with the fitness team today so there’s a chance he’ll do some of the training session (on Sunday). He is the only other one we have got any flags on.”
Speaking of Switzerland as attention turns to the Ivorians’ arrival, Southgate said: “I think the whole thing was a really worthwhile exercise for us and that’s why you want that quality of opposition. We could take lower level teams but you don’t learn anything and actually we want to be stretched, we need to be stretched.”