The England manager admits he had a sleepless two days after the defeat against Holland during which he decided it has to be no more Mr Nice Guy.
“We created an environment that took a bit of pressure off the players and we wanted them to relax and to express themselves,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot about that, but there now comes a point where, actually, we’ve got to demand more.
“We’ve got to find another edge. If people can’t cope with it, then they’re not going to be able to cope with it under pressure.
“I’d reflected a lot over the 48 hours following that defeat because I was probably awake for 47 of them!
“I’ve got to make sure that I’m constantly raising the bar with this group and we don’t accept any kind of sloppiness to creep in. I think the players want driving and they are starting to own a bit of that themselves which is really important.
“Once we’d calmed all the emotion and the negative emotion and the theories as to why we’d lost, the drive was that we weren’t satisfied and everyone wanted to make sure it was beyond a semi-final next time. That’s the healthiest sign for me.”
It was individual errors that cost England in the UEFA Nations League and John Stones appeared to be a particular scapegoat when he was left out of the third-fourth place play-off match against Switzerland.
That is a verdict that Gareth Southgate is in no mood to sugar-coat.
“When you lose there are millions of theories floating around a team as to what should have been done differently, if preparation should have been done differently and sometimes you have to dwell on that and boil it down to exactly why you lost the game,” he said.
“It was because of really poor decision making. I was very clear: we made too many errors on the night.”