- Jarrod Bowen was left stunned by Gary Lineker’s stinging rebuke of England
- He insists England’s star have ‘lots of confidence’ ahead of the Slovenia clash
- LISTEN to It’s All Kicking Off! on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. New episodes released every day during the Euros
Jarrod Bowen has expressed his shock at Gary Lineker’s foul-mouthed assessment of England, reminding the doom merchants they are unbeaten at the top of Group C.
The Match of the Day host labelled the performance during the 1-1 draw with Denmark as ’s***’ when he spoke on his own podcast this week.
Lineker and BBC colleague Alan Shearer have been among a host of former internationals to take aim for the players and manager Gareth Southgate.
But Bowen, reacting to Lineker’s profanity, said: ‘I didn’t know it was as strong as that. I thought his podcast might be a little bit more PG. But they’re more than entitled to speak about the games. They’ve played for their country and they’ve played at a high level.’
Bowen, though, hit back at the criticism when he said: ‘I think the sign of a really good side is when you’re not playing as well as you know you can, but you make sure you don’t lose the game.
‘We’re sat here with four points. There’s a lot of noise, a lot of uproar, as if we’re sat here with two defeats and bottom of the table. But the reality is we’re top of the table with lots of confidence going into the last group game, where we know we need to win. We look forward to that challenge on Tuesday night.’
The West Ham man also encouraged his team-mates to stay away from such comments on social media and in the press.
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‘Of course you see it, but there’s only so much you want to read before you either end up replying or saying something you don’t want to say,’ he added.
‘So you’re controlling what you want to see because it can affect your mood and put a negative spin on it, when you’re sat here after two games, undefeated and in a really good position. We know what we have and what we can do going forward. We know we can be better.’
England will top the group if they beat Slovenia in Cologne, and Southgate is set to stick with the same system he has used so far rather than make a change to a three-man backline. The team have so far not worked on any alternative formation.
However, Bowen has revealed that plenty of discussions have taken place at the team hotel over how to improve performances.
’It’s always important to have those conversations, especially when you don’t win a game,’ said the winger, who has featured from the bench in both matches.
‘You always think, “What could we have done differently? What did we do well? What did we do not so well? What went wrong?”. During the debrief we all sit down and have a chat about it together and then work on those things that didn’t go so well on the training pitch. There are always conversations about it, because we always want to improve and be better.’