Trio on target in England debut

LONDON • Gareth Southgate said Tammy Abraham, Ben Chilwell and Jadon Sancho face a battle to win their spots back, after the England manager was impressed by the experimental side he fielded in Thursday's 3-0 win over Wales.

The trio missed the friendly at Wembley after they breached Covid-19 regulations at the weekend. In their absence, Everton forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Wolverhampton Wanderers defender Conor Coady and Southampton striker Danny Ings scored their first international goals, while Aston Villa's Jack Grealish and Arsenal's Bukayo Saka also impressed on their first England starts.

"That is the really big lesson for anybody in that situation, really," Southgate said. "You want to be involved, you want to be playing.

"When you have got the shirt, or a place in the squad, you don't want to allow other people the opportunity to take it. Whenever we give debuts... there is an opportunity for them to push themselves up the pecking order. Several did that."

With Coady at the heart of defence, England played with a 3-4-2-1 formation as Calvert-Lewin, Ings and Grealish led the attack.

Calvert-Lewin, who has scored nine goals in six games for Everton this season, netted in the 26th minute with his first shot before Coady and Ings secured the win in the warm-up game for Nations League matches against Belgium tomorrow and Denmark on Wednesday.

It was the first time three players have scored their first England goals in the same game since June 1963 against Switzerland.

Southgate had warned the performance was not "going to be perfect" mainly because of his players' lack of familiarity with each other.

There were only 54 caps between them at kick-off. Michael Keane, Joe Gomez and the stand-in captain, Kieran Trippier, had 41 of those.

But Calvert-Lewin was the bright spark. Apart from his goal, there was also the dart on to an Ings pass that enabled him to go round Wales 'keeper Wayne Hennessey - only to find the angle was too acute.

Grealish, who scored a brace in last weekend's 7-2 win over Liverpool, snuffed out spaces and drove the team on with the ball at his feet.

Southgate will be pleased that he is able to play with a back three like they did, or revert to a back four.

Up front, they could deploy an attack revolving around the creativity of Grealish, or they could play Harry Kane alongside the blistering pace of Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and Sancho.

"I thought the players did very well," Southgate said. "It's so difficult for a new team to come together without much experience, it was not fluid at the start but we got more and more into the game, and I thought we finished strongly."

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE