England boss Gareth Southgate is asking for patience from England fans after a lethargic 2-1 defeat against Spain at Wembley.
Southgate was clear Spain were the better team for large periods last night but was still upbeat about the performance from his side.
He said: “I’ve got to give the players enormous credit because it was a game where we could’ve folded and disappeared but we didn’t.”
Southgate emphasised his point that for England to improve then patience will be needed and to “stick with the plan.”
He said: “We can either go back to our old style and we’ll never be a top team, or we can keep trying to do what we do and suffer at times.
“It takes time. We’ve a come a long way in a short space of time. Today was a tough test against a team the presses like that.”
The England boss was also impressed by Liverpool youngster Joe Gomez for his individual performance at centre-back. He said: “Gomez’s defending was exceptional.”
Southgate was also able to give an update on Luke Shaw who suffered a sickening injury to the head early in the first half. “Luke Shaw is up and talking, but he needs to be assessed.”
I found writing this report slightly challenging because I wanted to make sure the main information was being put across in the report and was clear to the reader but didn’t want to flood the report with quotes from what Southgate was saying. However I was able to identify Southgate’s main points in the press conference but found it difficult to talk about the main points in much more detail. I think this was because I was going off of speech which is a new style of report to write about.
Harvey Lawrence's Sport Blog 