Harry’s hammer rescues Stones
Gareth Southgate saluted the character of John Stones after the England centre-back recovered from a glaring error to set up the winner against Poland last night.
Stones was caught on the ball by Jakub Moder, who cancelled out Harry Kane’s penalty at Wembley. However, Stones later set up Harry
Maguire’s goal to make it three wins during the international break.
“It would be easy to fold in those moments and John didn’t, which was important for us to stay in the game and then a brilliant intervention to set up Harry,” said Southgate of the Manchester City defender. “It was important the whole team showed that reaction.
“He has been having a really good season. He made a mistake, he knows that, but he bounced back during the game and has got to keep doing that.
“What we’ve focused on in the last 18 months is eradicating those errors. We knew that was an area we had to improve on. He’s built a lot of resilience over that period. I didn’t think the pass to him helped, it brought more pressure on him.”
Southgate believes his team have further improvements to make, insisting some of his youngsters will only peak in two or four years time, rather than this summer’s Euros.
But he felt they showed their character by finding a way to win without the help of home fans in the behind-closed-doors fixture.
“Definitely it was about character,” he said. “To concede a goal like we did can hit the team but they stuck at it and recovered their composure and got an important setplay winner.”
Southgate says he would be against picking an extended squad for the Euros to be ready should players get ruled out through Covid. “There is some discussion about an extended number in the squad but I’m not 100 per cent for it,” he said. “There is a skill to picking 23 and you’ve got to make good decisions.”