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Jordan Pickford maintained England “weren’t far off” against Greece despite admitting that Lee Carsley’s attacking line-up left the team “a little bit open” in the 2-1 defeat at Wembley.
The England goalkeeper watched on as an experimental formation misfired in attack, with Carsley selecting all of Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Bukyo Saka and Anthony Gordon in the absence of Harry Kane.
But Vangelis Pavlidis scored twice, including a stoppage-time winner, and Greece had further chances on the counter-attack as England struggled to find the right balance.
“I think they just caught us on transitions a bit too much,” Pickford said. “I think we were a little bit open.
“Sometimes in football it becomes a bit weird because a couple of scruffy passes actually gets you out and get us countered quite quick and they did that a few times.
“They played the long ball and won probably second balls more than we won tonight and that might have been the difference in the evening.
“But the football we played was good and I know we always want to win but we didn’t.
“We’ve got to dust ourselves down and look at what we can do a lot better and move on and win Sunday.
“We weren’t far off. It was only two or three transitions which we got caught.
“Apart from that we controlled it but they got the better of us and we’re disappointed as a nation. It’s about how we get ready for the next game now.”
Carsley’s bold selection was a surprise after the interim manager said he would not “shoe-horn” attacking talent into his line-up after encouraging wins over Ireland and Finland last month, but Pickford said the players understood what was asked of them.
“The manager picked the team and we’ve just got to try and execute the game plan,” Pickford said. “Tonight we didn’t get it fully right and we got beat.”