ENGLAND head into their Euro 2020 group decider against the Czech Republic this evening with their manager, Gareth Southgate, admitting he does not yet know who he will be able to play in the game at Wembley because of a Covid outbreak centred around Scotland midfielder Billy Gilmour.

On a dramatic day that saw both England and Scotland’s preparations for their final group matches thrown into chaos, the Scottish FA revealed that Gilmour had tested positive for Covid yesterday morning. The midfielder, who was the Man of the Match in Friday’s goalless draw at Wembley, will now isolate for ten days and miss Scotland’s game with Croatia at Hampden this evening.

After Gilmour’s positive test was revealed, images subsequently emerged on social media showing Gilmour embracing his Chelsea team-mates, Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell, in the wake of Friday’s game. Early yesterday evening, the English FA issued a statement revealing that Mount and Chilwell were isolating “pending further discussions with Public Health England”.

All 26 members of England’s squad recorded negative lateral flow test results yesterday afternoon, having also tested negative when they completed PCR tests in the wake of Sunday’s game. However, when he spoke to the press at Wembley last night, Southgate admitted he had no idea whether Mount and Chilwell would be available this evening.

“We don’t know (if they can play) at the moment,” said the England boss, whose side will be guaranteed to finish top of Group D if they beat the Czechs. “They’ve obviously got to be quite a doubt, but discussions and investigations are going on behind the scenes. At the moment, they’re isolating and we just have to find things out over the next 12 hours or so.

“We had worked with the players on the training pitch (yesterday morning), and then you find out as you finish that this is the situation. I can’t say it isn’t disruptive, and we don’t really know at this point whether they might be okay for tomorrow or whether they could be out for ten days.

“There’s a lot of unknowns at this moment in time. Although we’d worked on the training pitch, we hadn’t confirmed the team. We will wait until the morning now, when we’re really clear on the final situation on the two boys as to where we stand.”

England’s players are not due to have another test ahead of this evening’s game, although the FA continue to be guided by Public Health England when it comes to their testing regime and the operation of their Covid bubbles.

“In terms of the testing, we had mandatory tests yesterday (Sunday) for the pre-game,” added Southgate. “We’ve just followed that up today because of the situation that has emerged with Scotland, as a sort of belt-and-braces really, just to make sure that we’re okay for people to travel together and eat together.”

Earlier in the year, Southgate had called for all of his players to be vaccinated in advance of the tournament, provided the Government’s roll-out to the rest of the nation was proceeding successfully as planned.

He was criticised at the time, with some claiming he was advocating footballers ‘jumping the queue’ ahead of those at much higher risk of suffering a serious illness if they contracted Covid, but having expressed a concern that an outbreak of Covid during the tournament could have major repercussions, he clearly feels his fears could be realised.

“You probably need to go back to my suggestions in March (about vaccines),” said Southgate. “I was fairly firmly shouted down for daring to suggest anything of the sort.

“I did propose it, although at that time I also said that I totally understood where we stood in the pecking order for vaccinations, and it’s more important that the clinically vulnerable and everybody else receives those first.

“I felt we were getting to a point where that would have been helpful, although in actual fact of course, vaccinations wouldn’t necessarily stop you catching the virus, so in fairness, it wouldn’t necessarily avert this type of situation.

“I’m old enough, I’ve had both vaccines now, but I’m told you can still catch it with the different variants, it’s just less dangerous.

“The reality is, moving forwards, I don’t think we’ll be in a situation where a positive test rules you out because I think we’ll be living with it like we live with flu.”