Thomas Tuchel has called on England to eliminate the individual mistakes that have undermined their recent defensive performances. The England manager believes his side have largely defended well as a unit, but costly errors in possession have made them vulnerable at crucial moments.
England's 3-2 defeat to Spain at Wembley highlighted those concerns, with Marc Guéhi and Nico O'Reilly both making mistakes during the game. Despite the setback, Tuchel insists there is no wider defensive pattern that concerns him and remains confident in his players ahead of the upcoming Nations League clash with the Czech Republic.
Of course, that is something we cannot repeat, especially not at this kind of level. We have to take care about this. We have to be technically absolutely clinical also under pressure.
"We need to improve these things, but strangely enough, when we had the ball we were the biggest danger to ourselves around the box because we just had too many individual mistakes. Purely in defending, I have no concerns and trust that we can do it.
"I don't see a pattern. It was individual mistakes. I didn't see a pattern in defending. I think we defended very well in a block when we were organized, but we had just big individual mistakes. But I could not see any defensive pattern that would concern me."
Perhaps now is not the moment for wholesale changes - and Tuchel made it clear he will support his defenders - and introducing Trent Alexander-Arnold would appear somewhat risky given his offensive tendencies. Tuchel was not revealing anything on that matter, but says he is excited to observe the goalkeeper rotation and also stated that Alexander-Arnold is demonstrating his commitment to playing for England.
Tuchel said: "We use the Nations League to see where we are with the other goalkeepers. It is in this camp it's Traff and Pickers, and we absolutely know what he gives us and how he performs under pressure. He did nothing wrong.
"There was no reason from performances to open up this position for competition. I think it's necessary with every other player that we are aware of 'what if'.
"If a player that starts a season well, like Traff at Leeds, has the chance to prove it and to play in our style and to do the build-up and patterns and defensive patterns in the way we want to do it. We just need to see it at some point.
"I will not tell you about other changes. We wait and then we see. But I will not change now because someone made an individual mistake, and they've been good for us through all the other matches.
"Trent has been good, he had a very good training week and the excellent training in Wembley after the match, where he showed that he absolutely wants to play and wants to be with us. We're good. Today was a good training session. Everything is fine. He's ready to go."
Back in 2019, England suffered defeat to the Czech Republic in Prague, bringing an end to their remarkable 43-game unbeaten qualifying run — a cautionary tale for the current squad as they push to secure a top-two finish and advance in the Nations League.
Even Jürgen Klopp is discovering that international management presents greater challenges than anticipated, following Germany's defeat to Greece — a sentiment that resonates deeply with Tuchel.
Tuchel added: "Everyone told me. Everyone told me that it is tough to form a team and everyone comes with different ideas and the focus was to bring them together, play properly as a team and implement patterns of play and we are a step further.
"We had a tournament together, we had this experience together. We digested it. We had a result that some think was not enough, some think it was a good result, whatever we had a result and we continue and this helps us. It is a process. So, it is another proof that to do it in international football you do it in four or five days what you do in four or five weeks at a club."