Gareth Southgate will look to balance England’s pursuit of progress with player wellbeing against Iceland – but the fact Wednesday’s match is a dead rubber will not change his approach.

A year that was supposed to peak with a shot at winning the European Championship on home soil has ended with the Three Lions’ entire calendar being played behind closed doors and squeezed into the autumn.

England complete their strange, truncated run of eight fixtures against Iceland on Wednesday evening knowing that the Nations League finals are already beyond them and that the visitors have long since been relegated.

“The expectation here is to try to win,” he said. “More than anything the players don’t want to let each other down.

“Whenever you’re representing any group, there’s the shirt, and there’s the badge, but then there’s the people alongside you. You want to be strong for them, and I think that’s what we’ve got.”

“There’ll be lots of areas where we’re competing against the flow, but we’ve got to make sure the bits that we can control we are firm on, and fair across the board.

“There were questions about September because clubs had just finished European football, and we were fair across the board I think, and we understand unfortunately of course that’s going to put us on a collision course at certain times.

“But I also know all of those managers in the league would do exactly the same if they were in our position, so I think there’s respect. I understand their world and I think they understand ours as well.”