Gareth Southgate: "It was a good workout"
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Gareth Southgate was pleased with his side's efforts as they ran out comfortable 3-0 winners in their EURO 2024 warm-up match with Bosnia & Herzegovina at St James' Park.
Three second-half goals – including a first senior international effort from Cole Palmer – were enough to earn a convincing win on a night when Jarrad Branthwaite and Adam Wharton made their Three Lions debuts.
Trent Alexander-Arnold and Harry Kane were also on the scoresheet and Southgate reflected on a job well done.
He told Channel 4: "Physically, it was a good workout.
"We just had to be patient. We felt that in the end we would create the chances and that's how it turned out. The scoreline reflected the performance. I think scoring more was inevitable. We had a lot of fresh players to bring on as well. There weren't a lot of caps in the team that started so there was always a chance there would be a sticky start."
3️⃣-0️⃣ to the #ThreeLions at @NUFC!
— England (@England) June 3, 2024
Our #EURO2024 preparation continues 👊 pic.twitter.com/JfOTO2V2tn
The Three Lions boss was particularly pleased with the efforts of Palmer and Ebere Eze, who impressed on the left flank in the first half.
Southgate said: "Ebere has got a lovely way in which he goes past people through the centre of the pitch. He's got power, so I'm really happy with what he did.
"I thought Cole a couple of times was trying to be too precise to get the touch to open up the shot and maybe if he'd got his shot away a little earlier a couple of times he could have had more himself."
Kane played the final 30 minutes of this match and Southgate revealed that his skipper will start the final warm-up against Iceland at Wembley later this week.
He said: "Our plan [with Kane] today was half an hour. He will start on Friday and he looks in good shape.
"The great thing is we have got through the last few days with no big problems. That's really important, we needed to get through these few matches.
"I may have a few more selection headaches after tonight but that's a good thing. I would rather we had good performances that caused you to think than poor performances. There were lots of individual things I was really pleased with."