England defence must tighten up says Mount

Mason Mount admits England must improve defensively if they are to go deep into the World Cup.

While many were toasting the attacking display as England secured a 6-2 victory over Iran in their opening Group B fixture, shipping two goals annoyed manager Gareth Southgate.

Mehdi Taremi’s brace prevented England from achieving their biggest ever World Cup win and Mount believes conceding twice in the knock out rounds could see his side going home early.

“I think you could see the way we moved with the ball and the combinations that we played with is something we worked on during thedays we were here ,” he said .“but you see things about us needing to be more attacking but in the major tournaments you cannot afford to concede goals. That is when you – going further – start losing games.

“So you have to focus on that. To score six goals is amazing but to concede two is not what we want to do and something we will look at going into the next game.”

England went into the World Cup on a run of six games without a victory. But Mount hailed the desire of the squad to begin their campaign with a win and put a poor spell behind them.

“The last six games I don’t think we’ve had a win, so going into the game you can have that thought in your head, that we need to get an early goal or else it could be a difficult one,” added the Chelsea midfielder. “But the way that we’ ve trained over the last couple of days, the focus of this group and the desire to go out there and perform today was top class from all the boys.