Gareth Southgate praises Jesse Lingard on England debut whilst Jordan Henderson and Dele Alli rue missed chances
GARETH SOUTHGATE praised Manchester United youngster Jesse Lingard after he made his England debut against Malta.
The 23-year-old shone for senior side in a 2-0 victory over Malta in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley.
Interim boss Gareth Southgate promoted Lingard to first team and he was thrilled with how the former Under-21 star coped.
Southgate said: "For me the real positive was Jesse Lingard, he had an outstanding debut. He has got a strong mentality, he is an exciting player and the stage is made for him."
But Southgate, who was in charge of the Under-21s before replacing Sam Allardyce on an interim basis, says their game against Slovenia will not be as straight forward.
He added: "The game in Slovenia will be very different. We played against a 5-4-1 and it was very hard to break down.
"My job is to get results that keep us top of the group and we've got to go to Slovenia and get a win.
"We would have liked to have got four or five goals but Malta in their last campaign had 1 goal defeats against Italy and Croatia. We could and should have had more goals."
And Jordan Henderson, who played alongside Wayne Rooney in midfield, agreed with his boss and believes him and his teammates should have been more clinical in front of goal.
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Henderson said: "We had chances, it could have been more. That's probably one disappointment that we didn't get more goals.
"I felt towards the end we got a bit sloppy as the game went on, which we need to work on, but overall it's good to get three points and scored a couple of good goals. So we will be happy with that."
Whilst Dele Alli played in the No. 10 role and although he missed a handful of chances, he sang the praises of Southgate in the England dug out.
Alli added: "He is a fantastic manager, I have worked with him before and he knows what I am about.
"Each time I go out there I try and play my football and try affect the game and I think it was a solid performance by the boys today and I think we started the game strongly."
