Our main aim is to make sure we seal our qualification for next summer’s tournament.
We were in a really strong position last month and ahead of the game in Prague, we spoke about qualification and we didn’t get it right that night.
So the disappointment of that result definitely carried us into a strong performance against Bulgaria.
We’ve now got to get that consistency in our game and make sure we continue with the quality of attacking play that we’ve shown over the last few years.
We also need to make sure that we’re much tighter with our defending. We can’t concede the ball in dangerous areas, as on the few times that we’ve done that, it’s been costly.
This game will be a different encounter to the 5-1 win in Montenegro last March. We only need to look at what we did to the Czechs at Wembley in that first game here and how that result turned around in Prague, to see the danger of assuming things will be fine.
Genuinely speaking, I think we’ve hit a really good consistency of performance and we want to do that for the final two games of the group.
That can affect how we’re seeded for the Finals should we qualify and that will influence the draw next month.
So there’s a big incentive for us, and we need to make sure we work at a high level as a team to keep improving to the level which might make us serious challengers next summer.
We’ve also got to get the quality of our play right, because we’ve caused the majority of our own problems and we’ve got to make sure we move the ball better than we did that night in Prague.
It’s a special occasion too, as we prepare to play what is our 1000th senior men’s international.
I went to the National Football Museum as part of the launch for the celebrations around this game where it hit me again what a privilege it is to lead your country and what an honour it was to wear the shirt.
It’s when you realise how few people have done that over more than a century, so it’s great that we’ll have some of our former players at the match. We want those former players to still have a connection with us and be recognised as a part of it so it’s a great moment for our current players too.
You can read the full piece with Gareth in the programme, which also contains features with Harry Kane, James Maddison, Declan Rice, Callum Wilson and Henry Winter as well as a section on the 999 games so far...
