GARETH HAS TO LEARN QUICK

Southgate too slow to react in final repeat

- Darren Lewis

ENGLAND clearly have the players but this game asked familiar questions of the manager.

Why, if everyone of an England persuasion – here and at home – could see that changes needed to be made sharpish, did Gareth Southgate not react sooner?

The Three Lions head coach remains, absolutely, the right man for the job.

He has set a new, higher bar for England management with his careful, authoritative handling of the contentious issues off the pitch as well as on it.

But this was the Southgate of last year’s European Championship final. The Southgate that was slow to react to events after England took the lead and Italy equalised, eventually winning on those welldocumented penalties.

This brought back the ghosts of the 2018 World Cup semi-final, caught between two stools after Ivan Perisic cancelled out the Kieran Trippier early goal, with Mario Mandzukic breaking English hearts in extra-time.

It could yet be that Southgate shows us the evolution of his decisiveness as this tournament wears on. He’ll need to, because this suggested not.