Gareth Southgate: The data behind his England reign so far

For all the criticism of Southgate as a supposedly defensive coach, England have scored three or more goals on 27 occasions under his stewardship – exactly a third of his games in charge.

While they have often faced a lesser standard of opposition in qualifying tournaments – they have beaten San Marino 10-0 and Montenegro 7-0 – those games also include a 4-0 win over Ukraine in the European Championship quarter-final and a 3-2 Nations League success against Spain.

A 4-0 win over Hungary has been made to look more impressive by the Magyars’ results since, including inflicting Southgate’s heaviest defeat by the same scoreline, while England’s Euro 2016 conquerors Iceland were also beaten 4-0 in 2020. Southgate’s side have twice scored six in a game at a World Cup, beating Panama 6-1 in 2018 and Iran 6-2 this time around.

Captain Harry Kane is the leading goalscorer in that time, with 48 of his record-equalling 53 England goals coming under Southgate, while Raheem Sterling has 18 and Marcus Rashford 14. In all, 37 different players have scored for Southgate excluding own goals.

At the other end, they have kept clean sheets in over half his games in charge, 45 out of 81, including in successive World Cup games against the United States, Wales and Senegal this winter.

Hungary aside, France and the Netherlands are the only teams to score three goals in beating Southgate’s side, who also drew 3-3 with Germany in September and beat Kosovo 5-3 in 2019.

If 2022 was inconsistent and a major trophy once more eluded England, the previous year under Southgate was arguably their best outside of the World Cup-winning 1966 campaign.

England were officially unbeaten, with 15 wins and four draws, though one of those led to the penalty shootout defeat to Italy in the European Championship final.

They matched their best FIFA world ranking, third, and scored a record 52 goals in a calendar year, including the 10-0 win over San Marino – their first double-figure haul since 1964 and only their sixth ever.

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They also kept 14 clean sheets and conceded only once in each of their other five games, Jordan Pickford responsible for eight of those shut-outs as he went 726 minutes without conceding a goal – another national record.

England trailed for only a combined 22 minutes all year, to Denmark and Hungary.

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