Man Utd star Maguire admits poor club form could be affecting England’s defence
HARRY MAGUIRE admits poor club form could be infecting England’s once mighty defence.
And the Manchester United star believes the personnel changes since the run to the World Cup semi-finals are undermining the stability of Gareth Southgate’s team.
The Three Lions back four looked uneasy from the start of the 2-1 loss in the Czech Republic and Maguire was asked if it reflected low confidence.
He said: “Yeah, maybe. We bring our club football into international level.
“It was a difficult game. Don’t get me wrong, we started sloppily. We took the lead but we didn’t deserve to.
“We controlled the second half a lot more than the first but we gave them a sloppy goal to win the game.
“We do need to improve on that.”
Three-quarters of England’s back four — Maguire at United, Danny Rose at Tottenham and Michael Keane at Everton — play for clubs having a tough time in the Premier League.
And Joe Gomez, who is not a regular starter at Liverpool, and Manchester City’s injured John Stones, the most obvious replacements for the struggling Keane, are out of the side.
The side that started the defeat in Prague contained only six survivors from the World Cup semi-final loss to Croatia 15 months earlier — Harry Kane, Maguire, Raheem Sterling, Kieran Trippier, Jordan Henderson and Jordan
Pickford.
Maguire said: “You want to develop partnerships. Sometimes at international level you can’t really do that.
“You have players who aren’t playing for their clubs so they don’t get selected, and you have players that pick up injuries. You’ve got to adapt.
“But there’s no excuse. We need to be better than against the Czechs. We need to be better going forward. We need to be better on the ball and we certainly need to be better at keeping the ball out of the net.”
Maguire fronted up after England’s first defeat in qualifying for ten years but became spiky when it was suggested the Three Lions had started “shipping goals”.
He said: “This ‘run of shipping goals’ I don’t know where it’s come from apart from the Kosovo game. We were 5-1 up in that game and obviously we’d made a mistake early on in giving them a goal. But we were 5-1 up and
maybe we took our foot off the gas and have to learn from that.
“We’ve conceded two against the Czechs and previous to that we’ve not conceded numerous goals.
“We will work hard and try and improve. But we haven’t shipped lots of goals over the last couple of years.”
England had conceded five or more goals in total over two consecutive competitive games only twice in 56 years before Friday.
The last time was in 2007, when a 2-1 defeat in Russia and the “Wally with the Brolly” 3-2 home humbling by Croatia prevented Steve McClaren’s team qualifying for Euro 2008.
There is surely no danger of them blowing their bid to play in what will almost be a home tournament next summer.
But they will need to improve significantly on Friday if they are to clinch their place at Euro 2020 with a win in Bulgaria tomorrow.
The Bulgarians were lucky to escape from Wembley with only a 4-0 thrashing last month, but the Czechs were beaten 5-0 in London in March and showed England’s next opponents how it is possible to turn the tables.
Maguire said: “We knew the Czechs were a good side. It wasn’t really a 5-0 game at Wembley.
“Bulgaria is going to be the same. If we don’t play to our best, we’ll not win. We need to make sure that we’re back on it — nail down our defensive duties and get back to keeping clean sheets.”
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Maguire was not too concerned about the young players in Friday’s side, saying: “It’s disappointing for them in terms of the result. But it will be a moment that they won’t forget.
“Mounty has made his debut, the first of many caps, I’m sure. He’s going to have a lot better nights than this.
“It just shows us that we’ve still got a lot of work to go. We’re still in a strong position in the group.
“If we do manage to qualify, we have to nullify these mistakes.”