Gareth Southgate warns England places up for grabs amid fears stars will miss Iceland dead-rubber

Gareth Southgate is anticipating clubs putting pressure on England players ahead of Wednesday’s dead-rubber tie against Iceland
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Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP16 November 2020

England manager Gareth Southgate claims he will "find out a lot" about his players amid intense pressure from clubs for their stars to sit out Wednesday's Nations League dead-rubber against Iceland.

England's hopes of reaching consecutive Nations League finals were ended by a 2-0 defeat in Belgium on Sunday night and they will be playing for pride at Wembley this week.

Chelsea's Ben Chilwell and Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson are both doubts for the match after being forced off in Leuven, while Raheem Sterling and Joe Gomez have already suffered injuries during the current international break.

Gomez may not play again this season following knee surgery, while Sterling is not expected to be fit for Iceland after missing Sunday night’s contest with a calf problem.

Southgate is expecting clubs to pressure their players not to risk injury in midweek, but warned his stars that places in the squad are up for grabs.

"It's still a game that's an opportunity for people to cement a place in the team or in the squad," he said. "We'll find out a lot now because for sure there'll be a lot of pressure from some clubs on their own players. That's what we live with consistently.

"But we've got players that want to play for England, we have pride in the way we play and we want to finish the group well. The performance last night was excellent, the players pushed until the 93rd minute and I couldn't be prouder of them doing that.

"So we have players that want the opportunity to play. We need to freshen the team a little bit, but we'll have to assess that over the next couple of days."

Chelsea defender Ben Chilwell limped out of England’s 2-0 defeat in Belgium on Sunday night
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Youri Tielemans's twice-deflected strike and a superb free-kick by Dries Mertens put Belgium in control after 23 minutes and England could not break down the world's top-ranked side despite another dazzling display from Jack Grealish.

"I couldn't speak highly enough of his performance," Southgate said of Grealish.

"I thought Jack Grealish had an absolutely outstanding game. Losing Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford, we lose a lot of speed. But I can't fault the attacking play until the last chance.

"I saw what I knew I would see from Jack, someone with the bravery to play. He took the ball in tight areas, his technique was good, we knew he would buy a lot of free-kicks. I thought he was outstanding – he should be delighted. I explained to him what we wanted to see when we brought him in in September."

Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson was also withdrawn at half-time in Leuven after complaining of “tightness”
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Despite consecutive competitive defeats, Southgate - who confirmed he had suffered from coronavirus - insisted England have improved since the return of international football and believes they have shown they can compete with the best sides on the continent.

"We've shown we can compete, we've shown there isn't much between ourselves and Belgium," he said.

"There are some other outstanding teams around Europe. It's so competitive. Four European teams made the last four of the World Cup, three different ones qualified for the last Nations League, it looks like three different ones again will qualify for this Nations League. That sums up how competitive Europe is.

"We're a team I believe that have improved across autumn having had 10 months without playing. September was a mess because players just weren't fit, but since then we've learned so much and I'm really pleased with some of the individual progress.

"The last two matches in this competition, I don't think we've got what we deserved but they're the fine margins of knockout football."    

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