Gareth Southgate breaks silence after John Stones injury scare ahead of Euro 2024

Gareth Southgate gave a brief update on John Stones after his injury scare during England’s defeat against Iceland.

The Three Lions produced a bitterly poor performance in front of a packed crowd inside Wembley as Jon Dagur Thorsteinsson’s in the 12th minute sealed a 1-0 win for Iceland.

During the match, England had two injury scares as defender John Stones went down holding his ankle inside two minutes.

The Manchester City man played on but was replaced by Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa during the half-time interval.

Towards the end of the match, fellow defender Marc Guehi also went down injured but managed to finish the game.

Speaking afterwards, England boss Southgate gave a brief update on Stones.

He said to Channel 4: “We think he’s probably okay, but we didn’t want to take a chance with him.”

Prior to the match, England were already without Luke Shaw, who has not played for Manchester United since February and also Lewis Dunk, who is reportedly nursing a knock and was not risked against Iceland.

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Speaking about the overall performance, Southgate added: “It was obviously a disjointed and disappointing performance and we didn’t show enough character. But actually, I think it’s a really good focus for us ahead of the tournament.

“Everyone is saying we’re going to go there and walk through and have no problems. But the reality of international football isn’t that. We’ve got to be far better without the ball than we were today, and then we’ve got to show more composure than we’ve shown with the ball.”

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