England: Toney, Gordon, Palmer? Southgate subs set the benchmark for Euro 2024 success | OneFootball

Rival nations are making the most of their bench as the Three Lions boss proves more stubborn

"You just have to be ready when the chance comes," said Ivan Toney on the eve of this European Championship, knowing he would be unlikely to displace Harry Kane in the starting XI.

And Jarrod Bowen even bothered to cite his source: "One of the main things the experienced lads have spoken about is being ready for the opportunity, because you never know when it's going to come."

Final pointer: Toney with Southgate before his dazzling late cameo against Slovakia

Getty Images

So, well done the England novices for getting with the programme so quickly, for staying on message and on the boat rather than rocking it; all for one and one for all.

Except it cannot have been easy for that quartet — and throw Cole Palmer and Eberechi Eze into the same mix — to have watched Gareth Southgate watch his first-choice forward line muddle through the group stage and then decide, ahead of last weekend's last-16 tie with Slovakia, that still no rethink was needed.

All six of England's attacking substitutes (and increasingly that appears to be their consigned lot) are not merely regular starters at their clubs, but talismanic figures. Between them, they contributed 101 goals and 57 assists during the season just gone, and that despite Toney, the most prolific scorer of the lot during the previous campaign, spending the bulk of it banned.

Southgate was bold enough to embrace this new crop when naming his squad last month, shelving Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish, having already ousted his most trusted forward beyond Kane, Raheem Sterling, earlier in the cycle. But he has not thus far been bold enough to trust them in the tournament's heat, steadfast in his belief that "your best players are still your best players" even when the team is functioning some way short of peak.

Even now it seems a change of shape, to a back-three, is more likely than one of personnel

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that every one of England's matches has been in the balance until the death, no manager at this tournament has made fewer substitutions than Southgate's 11.

A hesitant approach was vindicated against Slovakia, with Jude Bellingham and Kane left on to score the goals that kept England alive, but the statistic is still a remarkable one when you consider how many other coaches would give plenty for even half the attacking options Southgate has off the bench.

The 53-year-old has spoken throughout this and other campaigns of the need to make even those furthest from the XI feel involved, but not since the 2018 World Cup in Russia — when a 23-man group was easier to manage — has such a rigid pecking order been enforced.

Even now, as Southgate prepares for Saturday's meeting with Switzerland, it seems a change of shape, to a back-three, is more likely than one of personnel.

Might belief and enthusiasm among the fringe mob be starting to wane? Gordon's attitude is not in question, but he would not be human if not slightly miffed that he has played just a single minute. And a penny for Palmer's thoughts when Foden flew home for 48 hours last week for the birth of his child and still kept him out of the side.

Toney's cameo against Slovakia, though, ought to have given the "finishers" a lift. His assist for Kane's extra-time winner was the first goal involvement by an England substitute this tournament (Germany and Netherlands each already have five) and should renew conviction in the idea that even a moment might be enough for one of them to make a mark, perhaps against the Swiss.

To Southgate, too, it was a gift, vindication for his pre-tournament presentation on Sir Geoff Hurst, who went from a place on the bench to one in sporting immortality across a few weeks in 1966.

When Toney spoke again on the subject on Wednesday, it was with new authority: "Everyone is going to be needed, whether it is just being around the squad or coming on. You just have to be ready and it is going to take more than 11 players to win this tournament."

Should England's starters continue to labour, heaven knows that will be the case.