WORLD CUP COUNTDOWN STAN COLLYMORE Don’t dismiss Southgate as football’s Hugh Grant. He’s a tough cookie, a meticulous planner and our Mr Right

BE brave and keep doing what you have been doing throughout the qualification campaign. That is the most important message Gareth Southgate can convey to his England squad over the next couple of weeks. I remember Terry Venables saying to me that the first thing anyone does when they’re under the cosh is revert to old habits. And, for England, that would mean lumping balls up to Harry Kane or Jamie Vardy and asking others to feed off their knockdowns. That would leave people asking what we were doing – because there has been a sea change in style. Roy Hodgson had us playing 4-4-2 when he took us into Euro 2012, but Southgate wants his players to get the ball down and press high, to give them an opportunity to flourish in a system that gets the best out of them. Even if England were not at their most fluent while beating Nigeria yesterday, he still needs to tell them to bravely go out and play. And if that transmits through the group and we get a bit of fortune, then we can emerge from this World Cup with our heads held high. If we tense up again, then we could be in trouble. At recent tournaments there have essentially been two things for which England have been slammed. One is not getting very far – or at least as far as we think we should.

Glorious

The other is players who play regularly at 9/10 for their clubs and in qualification being no more than 4/10 or 5/10 at a European Championship or World Cup finals. In Russia, most England fans would say reaching the quarter-finals would be a victory. And that getting out of the group well and either winning the next game or suffering a glorious defeat against, say, Brazil would be acceptable. People would be OK with that as long as Southgate has got the same form out of his players that they have shown for their clubs. If players perform to the best of their abilities, then there can be no complaints – and, if that is the case, he will be the first England manager since Venables and Glenn Hoddle to have achieved that. He’s certainly stripped back a lot, if not all, of the rubbish that can come with playing for the Three Lions and I don’t think there could be a better choice for England manager right now. In the not-too-distant past, we’ve seen Sven-goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello given millions to pay lip service to the job. Yet, now we have someone who is very, very passionate about it, someone who has been the figurehead of the FA’S coaching staff at a time when the age groups are shining and he wants the senior team to be a success, too. I know which I’d rather have. And before you say it, this isn’t an old pals’ act.

We had big words when together at Aston Villa, we didn’t see eye to eye – with him the goody-two-shoes and me the bad boy.

This is me watching him as a manager over the years – and the past year, in particular, where I’ve seen a real maturity about him.

A lot of people seem to think Southgate is football’s Hugh Grant, this foppish character, but he’s not, he’s a tough cookie who has had to face a lot of adversity over the years.

At Crystal Palace, he was this erudite kid who had to fight to get into the team and, at Villa, he was captain and not always the most popular choice as a player for England.

Suffered

He suffered when he missed the penalty in Euro 96 and he walked away from his role as the FA’S head of elite development in Euro 2012 because the job wasn’t what it should have been, but he has come through it all.

He’s quite happy for people to underestimate him, though, and from talking to him and people around him, I know he has