On Harry Kane as captain
“Harry will be the captain on Thursday, which he knew a month ago as we’d already had that conversation.
“He’s someone whose leadership qualities are invaluable to us as a team and he’s clearly in a very good moment in terms of his form.
“We’re really enjoying working with him and obviously I’ve known him a long time and he’s been improving and maturing all the time as well.
“I haven’t decided [on permanent captain] going forward, but the important thing for me when I looked at the group of players at the start, was that of potential leaders and lads who hadn’t necessarily had experience of being leaders, so how do we get that to happen and give them a feel of it.
“It’s worked well over the last few months and all of those experiences will stand them in good stead. It’s different opportunities and experiences for people and sharing the responsibility across the team which is key.
“The skills, qualities and experiences needed for a captain aren’t just on a matchday, it’s everything around the camp, thinking about how you integrate the rest of the squad, how you involve other people and the moments to step forward and lead by example.
“There’s lots of things that go towards making a good captain and that won’t happen overnight, you’re talking about leadership experience which comes over a longer period of time.
“We have several people who can do the role now and that will only benefit us as a team.”
On Harry Winks promotion to senior squad
“Harry’s a player that we like and we had an opportunity, with Fabian Delph leaving, to put another midfielder into the squad.
“We could either look at a player for the short term who might not be with us after this month, or to integrate a young player who we thing could be a future England international and give him some experience with the senior team, get him up to speed with how we train and get a closer look at him.
“That’s what we decided to do and the more we can do that moving forward, the better. We might have done that with more players this month as well but certain injuries have denied us that opportunity.
“For me, I’d rather invest our time in exciting young players and start to build that bond with them.”
On Slovenia game
“They have to win the game. With their position in the group, and Slovakia’s second game being against Malta which you’d expect them to win, Slovenia need to win which makes them a dangerous opponent.
“Up to this point, they haven’t conceded many goals at all so it’s a great challenge for us to change that stat.
“We have some exciting attacking talent and we are a win away from getting to Russia so we’re excited about that and it’s something we want the whole country to be excited about.
“It will be nice to put on a performance that shows everyone we mean business and we are improving as a team.”
