Southgate talks Bellingham's late equaliser, and praises Mainoo

Jude, I mean, he had chances through the game as well and he was a real creative force for you. Yeah, I thought there were lots of good creative performances really. I thought Jared Bowen had an excellent game. I thought Ivan was very, very good. I thought we managed to get thrilled into the game the longer it went on. You know, in the first half, the space for him on the left was blocked a bit. Actually. Jude was drifting out there and there wasn’t the space for Phil. But when when we freed that up a bit after half time, he managed to find that space and really had a good impact on the game. I thought James Madison had a good impact when he came on. You know all of the changes, all the players that came on had a had a good impact. So and obviously Cobby from a creative aspect as well gave us something completely different. So yeah, Jude of course is the headline and that competitive spirit, that desire not to lose, desire to win in the end was decisive in getting the late goal. But I thought the whole team showed that throughout the game and recovered from setbacks with a pretty inexperienced team, really against the team that have got some very, very good players. So very pleased with a lot of what I saw tonight, Gareth there there’ve been a handful of setbacks over the last couple of games, but there’ve also been some surprising players who maybe who’ve stepped up and who’ve nailed the colors to the mass. How many players do you feel of your available 30405060 who you’re considering at present? How many do you feel are are ready for the challenge of winning the the European Championships? I’d have to sit and go through it all because I’m a little bit lost as to who we’ve got and who we haven’t really. So the great thing is definitely some players have emerged positively from the opportunities they’ve had and so, you know, we’ve perhaps got more depth in in one respect. But the injuries are a concern and yeah, we’ve we’ve got so many players missing at the moment and we’ve still got the real heat of the season to come. So the intensity of the games, the what’s resting on the games, we’re not going to know what what we’re left with until right until the end. But we’ll just have to make the best decisions that we possibly can. Hi Garth. Do do you feel after these two games that you’re you’re closer to knowing you’re you’re 23 and kind of just ask a question about Marcus Rashford and obviously he he didn’t come on tonight. Was that just a tactical your choice or is he injured or so In terms of knowing the 23, I suppose refer to the previous answer a little bit in that there’s so many unknowns at the moment in terms of who might be available. So yes, these performances were very important for players to be able to see whether or not they could play against high level opposition. But equally what the way that they play between now and the end of the season with their club in big matches is going to have a high tariff for us as well. So we will track all of that. No, I I wanted to see Anthony Gordon again. I thought he had an excellent impact on the first game and I thought that Madison coming into that area could open things up for us a bit. OK. Any other questions Turn here. Signing then Simon Gav, I know we touched on this last time but do do you think he’s going to get the protection from referees that he needs because he he seems to spend quite a lot of time on the pitch quite upset about decisions going against him. Yeah, I’d have to watch the game back to to see the challenges tonight clearly. I mean definitely on Saturday the a competitive game would have been refereed differently. So I’m not I’m not quite as clear on that in my head today. But yeah, look, he’s a good player. We’ve got players that want to get on the ball in tight areas of the pitch and there there’s going to be contact. If if you’re a top player, you’re going to have to live with that. And I do think in in tournament situations, qualifying situations, games are definitely refereed much, much more tightly. Gareth, just two, if I may, 1. What did you make of the way that copy did in a in a midfield three with Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham first? Well, his attributes are there for everybody to see that ability to receive under pressure and ride challenges to manipulate the ball in tight areas we were a little bit more open. There’s no there’s no doubt about that. You know, it’s it’s, yeah, we wanted to press aggressively and there were times where we turned the ball over on there in in on the edge of their penalty box and we actually had chances that we should have taken. The flip side of that was we had a little bit of a problem with Mangala pulling wide and Tielemans in the in the area. That meant that if you know as when our centre backs went in there, we were leaving the Kaku one against one and you know we struggled with that a little bit. So there were things to think about within that. He gives us a different profile of midfield player to anything else we’ve got and we’re really pleased with what he’s done. You know he’s he’s he’s adapted and adjusted brilliantly. You you. You can’t believe his age, really, that he’s just taking it all in his stride as he has.