Gareth Southgate has opened to door to the England squad to Watford midfielder’s Nathaniel Chalobah and Will Hughes as he looks to add more youth to his Three Lions side.

Chalobah earned his first England call-up under Southgate’s watch last September, before a knee injury ended his campaign, while Hughes’ early season form has led to calls for him to be included in the senior set-up.

Southgate’s willingness to back youth saw him name the second youngest squad at this summer’s World Cup, with only Nigeria’s average age of 25.9 coming in lower than England at 26.

With the England manager’s focus now turning to the European Championships in two years’ time, the chance for young players to continue impressing will remain.

"We're three games into a new season and we looked through a lot of different players over the last couple of years and decided that because of the way we want to play and the type of players we want to work with that there are some guys that didn't fit that model,” Southgate said.

"And so now we're into a fresh cycle of probably not going back to players that have been in before and that we've had a good look at.

"So the next group that we start to look at are probably coming through our younger age groups.

"There's a couple of others that are still young, that still have room for growth – the (Nathaniel) Chalobahs, Will Hughes, Ross Barkleys - but I don't want to bring them in now, three days into the camp.”

While Southgate cited Chalobah and Hughes among those who could feature for his England side in the future, he was quick to stress they will need to impress over a prolonged period if they are to earn a call-up and could be overtaken by even younger players.

He said: “I’d rather do that (select players) when we feel they’re ready, we feel that we’re looking at them on merit and we also really like some of the age groups below. We think they’re quite likely to be the ones that push.

“When you’re promoting young players you’ve got to be really careful about how quickly you do that because you want to give them game time, you want to bring them in, have them train and adapt to training.”